Trails from Class VII
by LeonPolaris
Summary: Picking up at the end of Trails of Cold Steel 1, this short story explores different character perspectives as they each deal with the aftermath of the events of the first game. Risking everything, Class VII stands.
1. Chapter 0

_Courageous, on the outskirts of Heimdallr._

"Full steam ahead! We might just make it in time!"

The chancellor's speech had already begun, if they hurried they might just be able to stop everything from-

His ARCUS rang.

"Tell me you got there in time."

"It's Toval, I'm almost to St. Astraia. Relax, the girls will be safe. No one is around here anyways, everyone is-" Screams echoed through the ARCUS. "...crap, it started. I'll double time it."

"Please do, I'm counting on you."

He hung up, Mueller at his side put a hand on his shoulder. He sighed heavily as Heimdallr came into view far in the distance.

"Were this Liberl, the Bracer Guild would have stopped this already." His mind flashed back to Cassius' face, complete with his moustache. "Rather, it wouldn't have escalated to this in the first place"

"You would probably just call Estelle and hand everything to her."

"Oh Mueller, when you speak the truth in that way you know how I get..." he grabbed the hand on his shoulder and drew a heart on his palm. Mueller recoiled.

"I swear..."

"Well, just relax, it won't do you good to frown so much. Wrinkles and all" He turned back to the front window.

"Sir! Pantagruel in sight!"

"It really is happening. We got played."

"Remember, no firing. We cannot cause civilian casualties."

The man on the radio turned around. "The 1st division is engaged with some sort of new weapon! They can't hold the line!"

Smoke started rising from Heimdallr as the sounds of the battle were now heard clearly. The Pantagruel however was on the far side, past Valflame Palace. They had to catch up to it to stop it from assaulting the city.

"Sir! Multiple contacts."

The Noble Faction's fleet was a nice match to the Courageous. In fact, the whole introducing the ship the public was to make sure that if worst came to worst, the Noble Faction would have to overcommit chasing him down not to be blindsided.

"But even then, this fleet isn't big enough. A mistake, Cayenne..." He pressed a button on the arm rest. "Load up the weapons just in case but remember, only in extreme circumstances."

Mueller went over to the gunner and looked over his shoulder as firing solutions showed up on the screen, in increasing numbers. "All targets in sight"

Olivert got up from his chair. "Engage!"

_Prologue_

_In Full Regalia_

_Later, Heimdallr sewers._

"I'm terribly sorry, your highness, this is the only Prince Olivert saw fit to take you to safety."

Toval was helping the ladies down the stairs as they pulled on their uniform, afraid of missing a step. They were now probably out of range of the Prince's ARCUS so they could only hear the occasional rumble to take as a hint of how the battle above was going.

"I am going to make sure that he compensates me for this."

Toval laughed a bit, just hoping that he'd be able to stay out of the imperial family's internal matters. Alfin landed on the last step of the sewers with a small pirouette, to his amazement. Elise on the other hand was struggling. She insisted on carrying her fencing sword to be able to help so of course she'd be terribly off balance.

"Ahh!"

A rat crawled over her shoe and panicked back up the stairs screeching.

"I'm terribly sorry, we really do need to move. I can carry you if you wan-"

"That will NOT be necessary" Elise closed her eyes and ran down the last few steps.

Thankfully the sewers were completely empty, as they'd been swept clean by the army in preparation for the speech. A small grace, perhaps. They would be able to get out of the city quickly, maybe even before the battle was over.

The problem would be if the Noble Faction had anticipated this.

"If your intention was surprising everyone, well, you at least got us." Alfin retorted at him, looking at her heeled shoes. "You could have given me time to change into boots or something else."

"Ugh-" He knew where this was going "Your Highness, I barely made it in time to Heimdallr at the express request of your brother, I couldn't actually call St. Astraia and tell them to-"

"Oh I am well aware of that," She snapped her shoes' heels off. "I'll have him write a song about this, about how the hero from Carnelia saved me. Or maybe how a woman saved him again? We shall see."

"I- uh."

Elise took a hint from Alfin and broke her heels off as well, finding a lot more stability. "Perhaps we shouldn't have been trying out shoes for the ceremony today. Definitely a bad idea in hindsight."

An explosion shook dust off the ceiling. Toval had been thinking he'd carry one girl through the sewers to make it faster on them. The presence of a second girl made this impossible.

"Maybe we didn't need to be yanked out of our seats in school."

Sigh. Is this how Ein felt all along about saving me? Did the princess even know how to use an orbment?

"Your highness, be careful with tha-" Elise tried to stop Alfin, but as Toval quickly realized, trying is all both of them could do when dealing with the princess.

A huge blast of water came from her ARCUS pointed up the stairs they'd just come from. Toval looked stunned at her.

"W-was that hydro cannon?"

"A what? My brother gave me an ARCUS unit he had prepared for me a few days ago, told me to tinker about with it." She opened it up and showed him the quartz placement. He actually recognized one of his setups from his early days. "He looked as stunned as you when I juggled the quartz around a bit, I just made it look really nice!"

The water came flooding back down the stairs and almost swept Elise off her feet. "Your highness!"

"Whoops"

_Skies over Heimdallr_

"Testing, Testing."

His voice, amplified enough to be heard halfway to Crossbell, was soon adjusted to a more reasonable output.

"OK, I think I got it now"

He was quite sure that someone was facepalming behind him.

"Attention, Noble Faction forces. This is Olivert Reise Arnor speaking. You are in direct violation of Erebonian law and can be considered enemies of the state. Please surrender and we can discuss this over some fine tea or wine, whichever you think is better"

The Courageous was flying in circles around Valflame Palace, where the 1st division had set up camp to fight for the city.

"I'll be waiting for your response, but please, no reason we can't be civilized about this." He sipped from a cup of tea that someone handed him a few seconds ago.

"Sir! The enemy fleet has changed course!"

"Sir! Multiple smaller contacts incoming!"

A couple of more reports which would be worrying to anyone but him came in. The big screen came down from the right and faced him with a face he knew all too well. Captain Claire of the RMP. She had some concerns to share about the grand plan, and something to say about the enemy's new weapons, but he wasn't worried.

"Thank you, Captain."

"But your Highn-" the screen turned to static.

That was not the person that had to answer the call, he would have to be more blatant about it.

"Cayenne, Cayenne. Can you hear me? I guess you can." Mueller turned around wide eyed "Just what do you hope to achieve? You already shot the chancellor, funded terrorism and are basically invading your capital. Surely people will see that you're not really a better alter-"

The screen turned on and showed the tacky Duke's face.

"Surely, you, the noble prince, do not believe that the chancellor was a man worthy of holding the future of-"

"What I think or thought of the chancellor has no bearing on the situation at hand, Duke. You are in no position to put yourself above him. You're just as bad as him."

"Oh? And what does that make you?"

"A third option."

"Hah! I'll enjoy swatting your loveboat out of the sky." He nodded off camera. "Then you'll be my prisoner, along with the entire royal family." The screen flashed into static and turned off.

"Sir! Incoming!"

"And so, the stage is set. Let the opening act to this great-"

An explosion shook him back to his seat, as he was bowing to an unseen audience.

"Engaging!" The helmsman took that as an order and the ship tilted aft, as the engines turned from humming to roaring in a flash. The distance was closed in a few seconds, to the first destroyer to the flank of the noble formation.

They had rehearsed all their maneuvers since the day they'd presented the Crimson Wings to the nation. The guns to the sides of the destroyer didn't even have time to move before the Courageous had a kill shot.

"Fire!"

The ship shook violently as a thunderous explosion rocked the sky. Hundreds of rose petals showered the enemy ship as Mueller turned around and slowly climbed the stairs to the captain's chair.

"You are now dead." Olivert spoke into the microphone, as it once again resonated to the outside. Of course, the entire enemy fleet wasted no time in turning to adjust to the sudden movements of the Courageous, but since it happened so fast no shots could be fired yet.

The -now covered in rose petals- destroyer also turned, painfully slow, to face the Crimson Wings. "Engage at will!" Olivert let the helmsman have fun and got up to meet with Mueller. "See what I did to that ship? I want to make that my lovebo-"

Mueller punched him in the stomach as the monitor once again glided down to meet an absent captain's chair.

"Prince? Your Highness? I'm halfway through the sewers, Princess Alfin and Schwarzer's sister in tow" His breath was a bit ragged. Alfin jumped into the conversation, saying something about him being a gentleman and carrying her piggyback.

Olivert crawled back into the chair, making as serious a face as possible. "Alfin, I'm glad to see you're OK."

"You'll have to make sure I can defend myself next time something like this happens, my ARCUS alone won't do it. Or, you could also arrange for Rean to be my personal bodyguard!" Olivert heard Elise retorting on the background.

Toval had to put Alfin down as some monsters appeared, but as he made quick work of them, Alfin took the ARCUS. "Have you heard from Cedric?"

"No, I've been trying to find him, but I was kind of hoping you knew. I know they won't hurt him if they do capture him, but I'm hoping to save everyone the problem of having to send Class VII to rescue him later"

"Or maybe even that Schera you met in Liberl, or Estelle."

He laughed. "You know, that's not a bad idea at all. I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, tell Toval that I should have someone pick him up at the cemetery's exit, once you make it out of the sewers."

"Got it."

"Take care, Alfin. Tell that to Elise as well."

During that conversation, the Courageous had made short work of the noble alliance's navy. Pretty much every ship was now coated in red petals, except for the flagship, which, of course, he saved for last. Cherry of the pie if you will.

"Attention, Pantagruel. This has been a _noble_ performance by your entire fleet. I feel like you may have almost managed to point your guns in the right direction once or twice, but I suggest that you pull back from this airspace."

"Whoa there, a little too hasty, aren't we?" An azure, flying, soldat landed on the tip of the Courageous.

"EVASIVE MANOUVERS, NOW!" Olivert's shout immediately prompted the ship to blast full speed and knock the Divine Knight off the deck. Of course, it was also caught by surprise and, despite trying, just couldn't hang on to the railing so he fell off to the side. The ship turned around but Ordine was once again in sight, just floating there.

"If you want a serious fight, I'm all for it." A double saber was pointed in the general direction of the ship. "I've been itching for a fight with this for a while, the ILF kept me busy after all…"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Why do you care? Just stay out of Heimdallr until we're finished with it and let us put the royal family back as a token piece of Erebonia at the top and we'll be fine. Until then, just fly around and do what you-" The conversation was cut from the other side and Ordine stopped moving for a few seconds.

The smoke rising from Heimdallr was only getting worse, and now the noble faction's fleet was facing him. He wouldn't be lucky a second time, damage was almost certain this time, and more so with the divine knight around. May-

"Sir! Should we engage?"

He looked back to where Ordine was. That's right, was. All they caught was his miniscule silhouette in the distance, heading East.

"The enemy knight is heading to Trista, sir!" came another shout from his officers.

"Flank speed! Do not lose sight of him!"

"Aye!"

As he'd learned from the Arseille, way back in the Liberl incident, flank speed meant he had to grab something or sit down. As the ship started gaining speed, so did the enemy fleet which moved to cut them off. Sadly, this time, they would actually manage to get in his way, not just stare at him dumbfounded.

"Stop!"

The ship drifted to the right as it reduced its speed. The entirety of the Pantagruel was now blocking his way to Trista. They knew he wanted the Divine Knight all along? An almost literal wall of ships was blocking his way through. They'd have to force their way through.

"Get me Captain Claire Rieveldt" A few seconds later her image popped up on the screen.

_Streets of East Heimdallr_

It had been about half an hour since they shot the chancellor. And it was her failure. She could have stopped it if she'd paid closer attention. She had been acting on inertia ever since then but after a couple of small breaks her mind wandered off into what ifs. Nothing useful, to her or the crew.

"No, aim upwards! To their cockpits!"

She was in a trance, couldn't really understand what she was saying. Nor did she really care, at all. They'd killed him, her mentor, the person she swore to prot-

"Get down!"

One of her subordinates slammed her out of the way as a Soldat collapsed into the RMP line. That was the 4th one they'd stopped since the attack started. Heimdallr was under attack, not by Liberl, not by Calvard, not by any of the enemies of the state she actually thought could do something like this, but by fellow erebonians.

She slapped herself in the face after getting back up. Her soldiers were dragging a pilot out of the unit and into one of the RMP trucks for arrest, taking care to politely bounce his head off the car's roof in the process.

Mourning can wait, right now she was needed here. Lechter was stuck in Crossbell, Millium was in Trista and now that Osborne was dead, and she had to do something to avenge him. She always had free reign over what she could do but for the first time in a long time she felt abandoned, she...

"Captain! We need you here, right now!" The same one that slammed her came back to her and grabbed her by the shoulders, yelling in her face. "You're leaving us for dead!"

"N-no, I..."

She looked to the side avoiding him and saw the makeshift medical truck skidding off, full speed to the rear, full of injured RMP personnel. A few lay on the floor or leaned to the walls of buildings, hurting or being taken care of by other soldiers. Only about ¼ of the RMP in Heimdallr remained fit for combat. Those that could she could gather when the fighting started, at least.

Her ARCUS had been ringing nonstop, now that she thought about it.

"Oh, thank Aidios I got through. Captain I need you to extract a VIP from the cemetery on the outskirts of Heimdallr."

"Your highness?"

"Make it quick, they are almost there!"

He hung up just like that. This time, a metaphorical slap to the face. She was abandoning people by not being here, exposing them to the same pain she was facing. This cannot continue.

She briskly made her way to the trunk of the makeshift RMP command vehicle, which was literally a car with the trunk open from where to hang a map and draw lines on. "Do we have word on the 1st division?"

"Unknown, Captain. They might even have it worse than we do."

"They'll pull their own. Have we contacted anyone else from the RMP?"

"Negative, either they were routed or captured."

"Show me."

The map of Heimdallr didn't do much for her. All she could actually understand was that they were losing ground, constantly. That was to be expected, however. A surprise attack on any capital would catch even the military off guard.

So far they'd been fighting along a huge front, if they centralized the enemy attacks on one position their soldats would be neutralized. Claire started drawing an escape plan for the RMP stuck with her, marking with lines and arrows where they should be turning once they actually got there.

"This is the way we'll be retreating."

"Retreat?"

She looked around and raised an eyebrow. Basically, telling him tell him if he had a better idea, to share it. "We'll deploy along this street and make a corridor for our vehicles to run through as fast as possible. After that is done the front line will redeploy backwards slowly, making sure to leave no one behind. If this is a war, it's not going to be lost today."

She grabbed her pistol and holstered it, dismissing everyone and got into one of the cars.

"Where are you going, Captain?"

"East exit."

"But you just told us to retreat west?"

"Exactly."

She floored the gas as the tires skidded just enough for the car to spin around. She went through a tiny hole in the barricade, next to the smoldering remains of a soldat.

_Heimdallr Cemetery_

"Rebellion Storm!"

The ground shook as the soldat crashed down, luckily not breaking any tombstones.

"You girls OK?"

Alfin spun around "Why yes, handsome knight. Come to save us, have thou?"

"I'll take that as a yes." They walked outside and almost got to the road before they spotted another soldat coming at them from the city. The remains of the previous two ones that he'd wrecked earlier a grim reminder that the battle in the city was not going favorably.

He flipped his ARCUS in the air, trying to look cool in front of the royal princess, only for it to drop to the floor, earning a giggle from both girls. However, that helped him. He noticed the battle orbment was almost out of charge. Not good, without arts he was a fish out of the water.

The soldat was sliding through the ground making its way towards them, looking more than a bit silly in the process as it put its body's weight forward to gain more speed. Obvious design flaws which could be exploited aside, their sword was no joke.

If the prince was correct, he should have some sort of backup here to take him elsewhere, but nothing was in sight.

"ARCUS, Activate!" blue light started emitting from his orbment as it started vibrating.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Elise and the princess trying to stay out of sight, figuring it was better to not have him running trying to save them, as the last couple of soldat fights had gone. Despite him making quick work of them, Elise actually had to deflect a couple of blows with her sword. For such a small girl she pulled more weight than she probably should.

Then again, the princess had cast some weird spell on her sword, which made it glow and repel the blast from the soldat's weapon. Slowly walking backwards was enough to avoid the slow, telegraphed blows from the soldat unit, and the one piloting this machine was not really the smartest guy either.

It tried burying him with a huge swing down into the ground which just managed to trap the sword into the dirt, meaning he just had to walk to its back and hit it with arts until it fell on top of the sword itself. The guy inside it probably wouldn't be able to get out until help arrived, which was even better.

It was only when he turned around that he realized that taking it easy was maybe the best thing he'd done today. Two more soldats came out, one was different from the others, extremely more agile it seemed. He looked at his orbment but it was pretty much gone. "Shit."

Seeing the predicament he was in, both girls jumped out, ready to buy him time to recharge the orbment. But two soldats?

"Just recharge that thing!"

"Yes sir, princess."

Elise stood at the front, putting her sword up, Alfin a few meters behind her. A few words of encouragement from the blonde princess, before the soldat got into position was all they could do to reassure themselves. Hesitant, she ran forward, only to have to backflip out of a huge swing that would have murdered her right there and then.

The soldat had not expected this, as he swung really wide and had to readjust to find the girl, but she was running towards him and pierced one of its legs with a strike, or at least she thought she did. She found herself bouncing off, after the blade sparked and glanced off. She jumped and tried landing a hit from the air, giving more momentum, but nothing actually went through.

A huge swing came at her horizontally, one which she blocked just barely in midair, sending her blasting back to Alfin. Still on her feet but disoriented for a second, she reacted in a split second to Alfin's voice, warning her of another attack, a vertical one this time. This time, the sword didn't get stuck on the dirt, and it quickly turned into a low blow after the initial miss. She jumped

Off her balance after landing, a third blocked strike finally knocked her off her feet and slammed into Alfin.

"Now it's my turn" He'd recharged his ARCUS in record time after all. It was only now that he realized why the other unit had not attacked them. It was being circled by an RMP car which was narrowly dodging its swings.

One problem at a time. A few quick arts allowed him to cross the small distance in the blink of an eye, and he had no problem disabling the entire unit just using his baton to hit a few exposed joints on the armor on the legs, meaning it toppled over no problem at all.

Now for the oth-

He jumped, narrowly dodging a swing, a really fast one from the obviously speedier unit. He did not dodge the punch that came after it. Gasping for air, he got halfway up before the girls tried helping him up.

"Is... that blood?" A concerned Alfin tried to wipe it off with her dress, as Elise once again stood up front. Her blade was once again glowing red, meaning that she would be able to deflect the weapon.

The soldat ran forward as Elise waited until the last second to raise her blade over her head. The weapon recoiled, sending the massive attacker backwards. Elise crouched as Alfin shot an art over her head. A huge beam of water gushed from the orbment, all the way to its legs.

At that moment, a huge shard of ice fell on top of the water stream, freezing it instantly, along with the legs of the now immobile unit. However, it noticed where that new attack came from, and swung the sword sideways to the blue haired attacker. She saw it and ran towards it, somehow jumping on top of the blade as it swung. Running along the blade, she got into point blank range and shot the soldat's hand multiple times, as it tried dislodging the blade from the tree it stuck into.

The hand gave in, and the sword would remain stuck. One less problem. Too bad the ice broke with that as well. Without a weapon, the soldat was at a disadvantage. It was looking at the 3 sides where the attacks where coming from and correctly recognized the weakest link. It went for Elise and tried to hammer her down with its fists. She rolled to the side, avoiding the crushing blow effortlessly. Alfin meanwhile finished casting something that lit some runes below the giant enemy and it sent it flying a few meters into the air.

"Mirror devices, activate!"

Small pocket mirrors flew around the assaulter, as the RMP Captain shot one of them with her rifle, somehow calculating the place for the reflection to always point to another mirror, amplifying the strength of a normal shot.

Toval, now completely recovered, helped himself into the air by jumping from the RMP car's roof, landing on the chest of the airborne soldat with his baton, art strengthened, to push it down into the ground with a final, earth shaking thud.

_Trails from Class VII _


	2. Chapter 1

Rean's flying robot was now a distant glint, as Crow's laughter subsided.

"Well you guys are just hilarious. I mean, Rean I could understand: he's got a divine knight and he knows how to handle a sword, but you guys?" He pointed at them with the double saber the size of a house. "You guys are just in over your head."

Alisa took aim with her bow. "You know, we may be in over our heads, but there's no shame in standing up for our friends. You could learn something from that, Crow." Laura nodded at her side, as her sword stood ready.

"Alisa, look, girl. You're cute and all but Rean is not here to save you. In fact, your knight in shining armor just ran with his tail between his legs" He pointed her way, in fact he probably could poke her with the tip of the saber if he moved half a meter more.

She lowered her bow. "I would appreciate it if you didn't call Rean my knight or something like that." Crow's half joking smirk stuck on her mind as countless nights on the dormitory, pranks, everything, flooded back. "Even then, that's bold talk from the guy whose ass we kicked back in Roer."

Machias adjusted his glasses "Really though? A cave in? I feel insulted that it actually flew over us" Fie smacked him in the back of his head. "What? It's true!"

"Well, even Angie was fooled by it, so don't let it get to you" Crow's robot turned to the spiegel next to it. "S, you there?"

"Yeah, that kid got me good"

"I told you to watch out for him, even without Valimar he's good." He extended a hand, but the Spiegel didn't move.

"Don't you have to settle things with those before getting to me? I'm fine."

"What? Do I really have to?" He shrugged and shook his head before turning back. "Look, I don't really wan-"

She let an arrow loose at the head of the mecha.

"Now!"

_Chapter 1_

_With Unyielding Force_

Laura's blade gleamed with blue light as it struck the head. The massive jump she made added power to the blow. It didn't even flinch.

"I expected more, Laura. Then aga-" he toppled back a bit as the full strength of the blow came in a few seconds later, his feet digging into the dirt. "Alright then, I'll take this seriously, even if the spiegel alone beat you."

She didn't even have time to move before the blade hit to her right, where Emma had just been standing. She jumped back but barely. Crow pulled the massive blade back almost slicing her leg, had it not been for Gaius who swung his spear to block the blade and make it miss by only a hair.

"Watch out!" Jusis jumped forward and blocked a glancing blow from the saber, locking with the blade, and using his other hand to hold the other side of his own sword as Crow pushed down on him.

Laura and Gaius got behind him and combined blows skyward to push the blade back. Emma and Elliot hit it with arts but they just glanced off to the sides, one catching the mecha Scarlet was in, earning them a retort from her as if she was watching a game of Lacrosse.

Alisa's arrows were not even bothering him: even Judgement Arrow he just ignored. If C wasn't piloting that thing, Class VII probably could take him on and win, just like they did in Roer. However, this wasn't the case. And he probably was still holding back even then.

Millium was orbiting Crow, buying time for the rest as he tried swatting her out of the sky. Laura moved in for a big hit on the right leg but couldn't avoid being hit with the blunt end of Crow's weapon and being sent off flying, as Elliot tried catching her before she hit a tree, only managing to get in the way and taking most of the hit for her. Millium took it as a signal.

"Guys! Hold here for a few, I'll be right back!"

Yeah easier said than done. Alisa barely dodged another slash. Class VII was now all over the place, as Laura and Elliot were out of combat, Jusis barely could entertain the idea of blocking the attack, and Emma could only shoot arts that did nothing.

Gaius and Jusis were blocking hits together, combining both their strengths meant that they could actually avoid being knocked off with every block. Never mind attacking, Machias was too busy trying to keep Gaius' spear from not breaking by using defensive arts on it to even think of using the shotgun on it and her arts were simply not even scratching the damn thing.

The line broke, and Crow had a clear shot to the rear part of the group. Fie tried getting in the way but was kicked off as if she were some sort of stray cat. She grabbed the leg and held on for dear life, shooting point blank into the joint.

"Fie, don't even bother." He shook the leg violently and she jumped off. Crow was surrounded by Class VII, but they were the ones pushed to the breaking point. A huge roar came from behind them, as the trees moved with a sudden gust of wind. Wind heading east.

"Phew! Glad I could make it!"

A booming voice came from the skies.

"Took you long enough" Crow looked up into the sky. Alisa followed his gaze and saw a massive airship. A red airship, holding position over them. "Well my job here is done. Rean's already defeated, I guess I might as well finish what I started."

"Class VII, don't think about dying! No matter how noble it may seem, it isn't the time nor the place for such a thing to happen. Run away!"

That's the last thing the prince told them, before Crow flew at the ship at blinding speed. The Courageous also banked left and painted a huge trail in the sky as it led Crow away from Trista. I guess there goes our support, she thought. She then ran towards Laura who was carrying Elliot with one arm over her trying to help, before they realized that Scarlet had gotten up.

"Take him to the dormitory!" Laura gave Elliot to Alisa and ran off back to engage Scarlet with Jusis and Gaius as Machias joined the front line in her absence. Elliot was not as heavy as the other guys so she really didn't have too much trouble helping him back into the dormitory.

She caught Millium halfway back, who was leading a rushing Sara, purple streaks of lightning coming out of her hair, into the east gate to relieve Class VII. Millium burst through the dormitory doors for her. Rather, Airgetlam did.

"Thanks?" Elliot said, half grimacing at her. "Just throw me on the couch. We should get ready to leave as well."

"Millium tell the others to get back here, we should leave before Trista gets run over."

Millium looked at her ARCUS, but no calls were coming through. "Maybe Claire would know something about reinforcements, but... I don't think we're getting help" She left riding Airgetlam back into Trista.

Elliot told her to go and get ready to leave, he didn't want anything but a change of clothes but he'd wait for the guys to get back.

She ran straight into her room, almost forgetting which side the door opened to. Clothes clothes. Come on.

She grabbed her bag and put in... what can she put in? Clothes? Sure, but she might as well change out of her uniform now. Mira? Probably. However everything she had here was her school life, and that wasn't coming with her. Even her lacrosse gear. Well, maybe the shirt.

She threw her clothes on the bed as she took them out of the dresser and found the glove that she'd bought for Rean. The one that he gave her because he thought it would be a nice gesture. The gloves SHE bought for HIM.

Which of course made her miss days of sleep just wondering when to use the glove or when not to. Were it up to her...

The door downstairs blasted open again as rushed footsteps and yells were heard.

"No, no! Block the door!"

"Get me that broom!"

"A broom won't hold the door!"

"Better than nothing! Just give it to him!"

She should hurry up. And by hurry up she meant putting everything back in, barring the glove. That was staying with her.

"Alisa are you in there?" Laura was yelling from her own room. "We're leaving! Get everything ready!"

"Yeah! Way ahead of you!"

"Sara is holding off Scarlet on her o-" Emma shrieked as she broke something made out of glass, flustered by packing so fast.

"Where's Fie?"

"With Sara. Machias is also helping" Millium had also come back, but she wasn't packing. It was more like she was making sure everyone was OK. "Oh, I'm not packing. All I need is this!" she pointed to her hat.

Ugh, whatever. She rushed up the stairs again to check on the guys. Actually the guys were not even packing, only Jusis was there, standing by Rean's door. He seemed flustered when she found him, which pressed him to open the door.

She also went in, the place she'd gone in a lot of times, as a friend, of course. She wasn't counting on Jusis being there, but she just had one objective. She started going through the desk, making a mental note to apologize to Rean over it, but she was sure he would understand. He always understood her, eerily so. Wait, why is he here?

"I told you, I'm making sure that no one knows his secret, trying to see if he has some sort of journal or something that mentions his, uh, circumstances"

She laughed a bit. Who would have thought, Jusis Albarea, of all people, would think in someone so much as to do this. Surely not a year ago. She was done with the desk and the bed but it was nowhere to be found. Maybe the-

"Looking for this?"

Jusis threw the glove at her face, her eye twitched a bit. "Yes."

"Of course you were. I was also looking for that as well" Alisa was close to murdering him but she was caught off guard by the sudden declaration. Jusis had also thought about her, in his own, twisted way.

"Don't look at me like that, Reinford, you changed just as much as I did. Or should I remind you of how you couldn't even talk to hi-"

"Noooo no" She blocked her ears and ran downstairs, leaving Jusis to his business. Yeah she'd also changed a lot but she wasn't ready to talk about it to Jusis of all people. Maybe the girls but not him. Rean was a different case altogether. Agh what, just stop thinking Alisa. Or she'd trip again while running down the stairs.

The living room was not in it's usual disposition, as couches were pressed against the doors for makeshift defense. Class VII slowly gathered again, and Emma tended to Elliot's wounds. Sara and the away team knocked on the door a few minutes later, having disabled Scarlet's spiegel for a few minutes again.

While they knew they had to leave, the problem was deciding how to. Escaping on foot was not a really good alternative, and their only exit was through Scarlet, again. Maybe the train station?

"A train running through a warzone?" Sara looked at her, as if disappointed at her teaching skills.

"No, not a normal train, maybe a small maintenance wagons. I know I saw a few of them."

Everyone's eyes lit up for a second. It was a viable plan. One little snag though. "I don't think anyone here knows how to operate one though..." She did have to remind everyone of that.

"We'll cross that bridge once we get to it" Sara waved her off, as she opened the door. "Follow me kids, I'll lead the way" She jumped outside. Everyone did a little eyeroll behind her and followed suit.

Getting to the train station was not hard at all, as the instructors were still holding the line. Wait, Sharon was there as well. Maybe she knows how to-

"I see one!" Fie ran forward and jumped on top of the engine. A small maintenance train, of Reinford make, no less. She should have read about those damn things when she had the time. "I think it's in operable condition."

"Well that's a relief" Elliot was now back on his feet, Emma's mysterious medicine working wonders again. "Now about that other bridge.." Everyone formed a circle as Alisa crouched down in the middle, checking her bowstring. "I know how to keep it running not how to start it. I wouldn't bet our lives on that skill." Jusis frowned.

"Well then, if she can't do it we're pretty much dead"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jusis. Really helping here."

Jusis looked at Millium. "Doesn't that thing know how to operate a train or something? You're always full of weird tricks up your tiny sleeves."

"Nope! Why would he, know, he doesn't catch the train to work"

"Fair point" Machias was reloading his shotgun, making sure it was ready in case it was needed. "Maybe if we find the crew?"

"Oh really, Regnitz? Do we buy them at the general store?"

"Shut it, Albarea. You know what I mean"

"Maybe they are all in Thors after the evacuation started?" Emma's assessment was probably the correct one as everyone nodded.

"Well unless someone knows how to operate a train, I guess we're stuck with this plan." Jusis looked at Millium again. "You sure you don't know how to run one?"

"Are you old enough that you're forgetting stuff already? Lechter only gave me 3 tries to get a train running and I got it on the third one, but that's no good he said. I won't argue with him on that! He's smarter than I am"

Jusis rolled his eyes. Since she was already crouching she started pointing on the floor on an imaginary Trista map in everyone's head. Sara clapped twice but no one paid her any attention.

"Maybe if we split up and send someone into Thors and get the crew out they'll be able to help us"

"I see, we have to hold the station after all, it won't mean anything if we have the crew and not the train."

"Exactly, Emma. We should also keep an eye out maybe we can help the instruct-"

"Guys! Listen to me!" Sara stomped her foot like a little girl, earning everyone's attention, finally. "OK, uh, that actually worked. Uh..."

"So, Elliot, Machias and Fie will run into Thors and get the crew and run back here. Everyone else will hold the station and the east exit if we have to make sure the corridor is open. If they get into the plaza it's game over" Everyone nodded at the plan she drew. "Questions?"

Instructor Sara finally broke into the circle. "Guys, while I'm proud of you being able to think correctly, you should know what's at stake here." She pointed her gun to Emma and her blade to Elliot, who flinched back, at least Elliot did. "See this? This is what awaits you out there"

She pointed her gun to everyone, even down at her, still kneeling. The barrel of the gun less than a few centimeters from their heads. Not the most, uh, orthodox method. "I won't be there to save all of you. Hell I don't think I could save myself out there another time." She put her weapons away, sighing. "Are all of you sure? This is the final chance to surrender and maybe wait for things to die down."

Emma spoke. "I don't think that I can walk away from this. Not with Celine gone, not with Rean gone as well. If I gave up now I don't think I could ever look myself in the mirror. Not after what all of us did to save the festival. Not after what just happened in the capital."

"I will not let the Noble Alliance, or my father, tarnish the reputation of what nobility in Erebonia means to the average citizen, and even amongst ourselves. This I will not tolerate, by my own hand if I have to." Jusis intended to continue but was cut off.

"Easy up there, King of the world. Who said it was the nobility that has to stop them?" Machias shouldered his shotgun. "It's only a matter of time before Erebonia gets rid of the outdated nobility and defaults to a ruler based on meritocracy, not lineage. I, Machias Regni-"

"Yeah we got it, settle down." Fie took a moment to tie up her shoes. " I've seen worse so I don't really care." She'd just saved everyone the trouble of hearing this again. Mental note to thank her, made.

No further statements, huh? Alisa grabbed her bow which she'd set down next to her and got to her feet. "I... uh. Won't pretend I'm Rean, or half as good at giving speeches as he is, but" She glanced around and no one intended to stop her. "I think Rean himself told us back then, that we had a duty to the school, not just to our nation. To our seniors, to our families... to ourselves"

She pointed with her bow to the entrance. "Now then, I'm not ready to die or be captured. Not today at least, not after everything we did to get here. Not when we're so close to making it out. But everyone else doing this probably feels the same way. No one really wants to die."

Sara was nodding at her, arms crossed. Alisa moved on "I don't think I was ready to give up when we bought Rean time to get away, but I had also accepted the possibility. I think everyone had as well." She looked at her peers. "With that said, we might split up now, but remember, we're all Class VII, and more importantly, Thors students."

Silence reigned for a few seconds until the head of a wrecked soldat crashed through the roof of the station, the rest of the unit still stuck on the ceiling.

"I really think we should go now" Fie stacked up on the door, beckoning her squad mates to follow her. "It's either that or we surrender now and we made Alisa waste a lot of saliva"

"Well we can't have that, I'm sure Rean would be pissed off about it." Wh-

"Instructor!"

"Clearly someone is desperate" Laura sneered at her, earning a scolding from the purple lightning.

The away team and Instructor Sara left together, heading to Thors. A huge crash came from the roof as the rest of the soldat finally made the ceiling collapse, bringing their attention to the train tracks. After making a quick barricade on the door, they realized that the actual train tracks could be entrances for soldiers.

Laura and Emma were checking the right track exit while Gaius and Jusis took the left one, while she was stuck inside the locomotive trying to figure out if she could run it. The second line of tracks were just guarded by Millium from her bird-eye view. The battle outside was getting closer to them, but they were still-

"Watch out!"

A blinding flash threw her to the floor of the train after she peeked out. Her eyes burned as she covered her face screeching. Someone was trying to help her back to her feet as she rubbed her closed eyes, tears streaking down.

She heard gunshots and clangs outside. "Go! I'm ok!" She was not but it sounded serious outside. She opened her eyes but couldn't make anything out, as if she was opening her eyes underwater. She was on all fours crawling, trying to find her bow. Breathe Alisa. Breathe. She touched her face, no blood or anything. Whatever exploded just blinded her, nothing too serious.

Sharon taught her to fight with her senses. Too bad her bow actually implied having to see something. Maybe if she got a knife or something. Emma came over to her and pushed her down to the floor face up.

"_Aperi oculos eius"_

Her eyes stopped burning at least. She thanked her and tried getting up, her knees only wobbling a bit. She cut herself with some glass but nothing serious. Emma put her bow in her hand. "I have an idea, Alisa. You shoot, I'll redirect the arrows around"

"What? Are you crazy?"

"Trust me, I did this already... once"

She wha-? Actually never mind. "Ok, just tell me if I'm not aiming to one of us" She leaned outside the train's door and aimed in a general direction of the sounds. "On your mark?"

"On my mark"

Her vision started to come back, somehow. Whatever Emma did was wor-

"Mark!"

Her arrow flew straight and narrowly missed Laura, who flustered shouted back at her before blocking a bayonet strike. "Emma!"

"I'm sorry! It's faster than I thought, from this angle..." Her vision was now distorted in a funny way. She could see close to her, but not further than a few steps. Close enough to see Emma's face contorted over calculations. "Try shooting at the ceiling."

Fair enough. She aimed and let an arrow fly. She couldn't see much but heard the orbal staff activate. Her vision came back in time to see multiple arrows raining down on the retreating soldiers.

"How, what?" She ran out, almost stepping on the flashbang that honestly scared her senseless, and confirmed that the arrows did indeed multiply. Everyone looked back at the pair, as Emma just shyly giggled, scratching her nose.

"I just used my entire arcus charge though, and I'm not sure how I did that. Is anyone hurt?" She saw a few blood marks where soldiers probably got hit by arrows before running back, but miraculously Class VII was intact. "Alisa, you're bleeding". And in fact, she was. Her leg was dripping blood into her stockings. Tch, don't worry about this.

If the soldiers came back with a Soldat they'd be dead in no time. The other team had to hurry up or they'd all be goners now that the noble alliance forces knew that they were here. Millium flew back inside the train station from the same place those soldiers had just ran from. "I got them all!" She shouted. "The instructors and Sara are still holding the gate, they probably weren't expecting us to be guarding their flank here."

"Well, guarding is a way of putting it, yes" Jusis sheathed his sword as he said that. "But we are in no position to hold off another assault. How long has that idiot Regnitz been gone? He should be back by now."

"Maybe they ran into trouble?" Was Laura's really helpful remark. Thanks, we needed to worry about them.

"They can't have run into trouble, we basically held off the only other possible attack route when we ran into S earlier" She felt that she didn't need to state the obvious but apparently it was needed. "Maybe Crow is back?"

"Unlikely, the Courageous was as fast as a gale wind, he should have trouble catching up to it, let alone fight it." Gaius called his hawk and it basically nodded at his assessment. "Unless he came back because he couldn't catch up..." He frowned at his deduction.

"No, then Olivert would engage him to stop that. It's basically why he showed up." Emma shot that down. "I'm thinking that he may have known about Rean from the beginning."

"You mean the whole big robot thing?" Millium came back from the air and landed, dismissing Airgetlam. "I think Claire told me once that he knows a lot more than he lets on, about a lot of things, so it's definitely possible"

Alisa facepalmed. "Are you compelled to give us, like, top secret information every 5 minutes?" Alisa made a mental note to not tell her any secrets anytime soon. Not that she did anyways, but it won't hurt to remember that.

"An issue for another time. Focus on the business at hand." Jusis pointed with his thumb to his back, facing the door. "Either we go take a look or we keep waiting, it's as simple as that. I hate to do this, but if Regnitz ran into trouble I'm obliged as a noble to protect his commoner _derriere_, much to my dismay."

Everyone rolled their eyes.

"Fine." She made sure her eyes were fine and briskly made her way to the door, only to get smacked by it as it opened suddenly. From the floor she could make someone with purple hair had just ran into the station, destroying the barricade as she opened the door with minimum effort. "You know, you could knock next time."

"No time, I don't see the other kids and-" A big explosion was heard outside, really close this time. "Just go! Leave, I'll hold them off while the instructors fall back into Thors."

"What? You can't be serious!?"

"Oh I'm very serious. Either you wait here to be captured or you leave now while you have a chance."

"It's preposterous, we can't leave you here alone to be captured. As an Albarea I won-"

"Consider this my way of repaying you for not actually dying back in Roer. I still don't know how you guys pulled that off." The door started banging. "Besides, I'm not alone" She snapped her fingers and a couple of archaisms showed up. "I still have these two, they'll get me through this atrocious raid"

"But instructor, as a practitioner of the Arseid-"

"We don't have time for this!" The door banging increasingly louder on the background. "Go! I'll catch up to you later"

Emma holstered her staff and pulled on Laura. "Maybe we really should go before someone gets hurt"

Alisa took that as a signal to grab Jusis by the arm; the stubborn idiot didn't move, however. "Argh! You said it yourself we don't stand a chance!" Gaius pat him on the shoulder and shook his head when he looked back to him.

Tch, of course you listen to him. Men.

Before long they were running outside the station through the east facing tracks, not before hearing the doors go down and Instructor Sara's war cry which would send chills down her spine if she had to face that crazy madwoman.

"Good luck, Instructor."


	3. Chapter 2

"Maybe we should take a break here guys."

You know it's serious when Gaius himself asks for a break. They'd made their way out of Trista a couple of hours ago but once the adrenaline of the fighting left their bodies their legs started feeling really heavy. To be fair, even with all the military training and even the field trips, they were not ready for what happened hours ago.

Not while missing Rean and Crow, and someone to generally take them along as Angie did in Roer. Sigh, that feels so far away now. Without Rean they generally coordinated as well as they did back at the station, which normally didn't work out as well as it did. Maybe they got better, but who knows. Rean was there making stuff work, as he generally did.

"You OK there?" Laura tapped Alisa's shoulder, to which she nodded. They'd made their way to a small stream on the side of the road, where they could take a moment to relax their weary feet. Laura lost no time in taking off her boots and putting her feet in the stream, as Jusis, further upstream, washed his face.

Emma just flopped down by a big tree. Gaius found shade on the other side of the tree as he laid against it, Zio perching himself on a tree branch over his head. "What time is it?" It was probably getting late already, which just reminded her that they'd not eaten lunch because of the radio transmission.

Sigh. Yeah, that happened today. She'd forgotten all about it. "Do 10 minutes sound OK for a breather?" Everyone just groaned in response. "That's a yes, then." Alisa held her head with her hands as she tried to process everything they'd done until now.

_Chapter 2_

_An Angel's Respite_

Off the side, she saw Jusis come back and stand by Emma on the other side of the tree. "So, when are you going to tell us what's going on?" He crossed his arms and waited until Emma tired of giving half answers. "I mean about Rean. About the divine knight that came out of a book of legends. Celine being able to talk… should I go on?" 

Laura and the others had also come around and formed a semi-circle as they sat around Emma. She was not getting out without answering something at least. "Uh, where to start?" She laughed uncomfortably as she wiped her glasses with her skirt.

"Try where's Rean?" She'd also joined in as she sat down next to her. "Or why you know so much about all this. I mean, I understand you can't tell us everything but…"

"No, it's fine Alisa. Uh… Rean, I don't know. Celine is with him and I trust her, so there's that on the plus side. The other question is trickier to answer. I don't really know much about this at all, Celine in fact knows more than I do probably. My grandmother…"

"We don't really know much about your family either now that I think about it" Laura cupped her chin as she frowned, trying to remember. "No, not that I recall."

"It's complicated, really. It's not like I won't ever tell you but doing so might actually make stuff worse now. Basically, I knew that the old schoolhouse was housing a divine knight, which is one of the reasons why I'm here in the first place. The fact that the building was shifting was proof that an awakener was around, and since we were the only ones entering…"

"So that's why you knew that we'd be tested. But it could have been any one of us." Jusis was still looking at her with his arms folded. She shook her head.

"I had multiple discussions with Celine about who it might be at first, but we narrowed it down to Rean and Laura very quickly. We considered Instructor Sara as well for a second, funny enough." Everyone was still trying to wrap their heads around that image as she continued. "Celine actually lured Rean's sister into the schoolhouse much to my dismay to prove it. And it worked."

Laura spoke after a long pause. "Why me, though?"

"Lohengrin Castle and Legram should point you in the right direction to why I thought of that." She sighed while Laura nodded slowly. "I honestly thought we had more time than this…"

"We all did. No one wanted what happened today to happen." Alisa got up and dusted her skirt. "We should start moving, that's enough rest for a few hours. And we can talk while we move."

Everyone nodded and they got back to the business at hand. They'd decided that the most logical choice now that they'd gotten away from Trista was get to Celdic, and figure it out as they went. But since Celdic was a long walk away, they held the strategy meeting on the go, as Millium flew overwatch for the team.

"But there's no real guarantee that the trains will be running from Celdic, is there? For all we know, all the trains stopped working." Gaius said as he looked up to the sky, probably looking for Zio.

"Gaius, the trains are a pivotal part of the Erebonian economy, whoever controls Celdic won't be able to stop the trains for too long. In fact, having them operational is probably the best choice from a political point of view."

"They just murdered the chancellor, Alisa. I don't think they care much about politics" Laura shook her head as she said that.

"Yeah, fair point. But the economic aspect is still there. Reinford would grind to a halt without the train system, and S did say that Reinford was working on those Soldats the nobles were using." She clenched her fist reminding herself to make this right somehow.

Millium descended with Airgetlam almost to their level, but not quite low enough for her to walk, as she just glided next to them. "Alisa is right, Reinford made those. And most of their production goes through the railways." Yeah? I just told them this. "Claire told me that it was a very important thing for the empire."

"Wait, Claire." Something clicked. "Isn't she on the RMP? She would have full control of the railways"

Jusis chimed in this time. "I don't think that the RMP has much fight left in it after what we saw in Heimdallr. If we go with the best-case scenario that this entire situation didn't blow up into a full civil war, which I doubt, then the RMP might still hold some railway stations. Considering Celdic is under my father's rule… No, not even in the best-case scenario."

"If we do think it's a civil war, what do we know about it?" Everyone shrugged at her, as Jusis got an Imperial Chronicle out of his back, before recounting the events that had led them to this juncture.

"It says here that the imperial divisions and the provincial armies are mobilized and aiming to invade Crossbell…" he mumbled a bit as he gave some unit dispositions at the Twin Dragons Bridge, and how the invasion was imminent, even after what happened at Garrelia Fortress.

"From what I can tell, everything from Trista to Twin Dragons is under the provincial army then, isn't it?" Gaius looked over Jusis' shoulder looking for a map or something, but no such luck on the Chronicle.

"Basically, that." He closed the Chronicle as he handed it over to Gaius. "I don't really believe that we're wanted or anything, not yet. They should be more worried with actually securing Trista, and considering we've already seen a couple of armored cars roll past us, that's far from being the case."

"Well, if we ever intended to go to Crossbell… Hey is that…?" Emma squinted her eyes through her glasses. A caravan approached, as they'd done the last two times, they took cover behind what bushes the could find, but this time they were extremely close to the road. 'Hold your breath' was the only thing she could think about.

The ground shook as the armored column moved along the road. Not only would they stand no chance at all if they tried fighting them, they'd probably be shot to pieces before they could even try to say hi. She could make out at least 4 or 5 Achtzehn tanks, with armored cars and a few soldats for good measure.

"This is not good. If Trista was in fact holding out…" Alisa and Laura shared the behind of a bush, uncomfortably close, more so when you considered their weapons. "Hey give me some room here." she turned around.

_Clang_.

Their weapons collided, as Emma looked at them wide eyed. Gaius slowly unsheathed his spear and Jusis took his ARCUS.

"Huh, did you hear anything?"

Oh no, they'd heard that. Both she and Laura froze. Don't. Move.

"What?" The other soldier shouted back at him. "I can't hear you!"

"I SAID, DID YOU HEAR SOMETHING?"

"ARE YOU PULLING MY LEG?"

To be fair, it was extremely noisy with all the vehicles, but a clang could be heard. The soldiers kept walking, not a care in the world. Well if they did have to fight someone they would probably have no problem, not with every weapon this side of Heimdallr on their little column. Her mind flashed to the railway guns. If Erebonia could mobilize this with just a provincial army, the railway guns were not even needed at all.

After what felt like eternity, the column passed and everyone got out of hiding. Some laughs were shared but a small argument erupted in the middle.

"This wouldn't have happened if you'd backed off!"

"You're the one with the bow! What are you doing on the front? What if they'd found you out? Were you going to smack them with it?"

"I don't think we should…"

Jusis stopped Gaius by putting his hand on his shoulder and shaking his head.

"What, does the fact that Fie isn't here to blame for your own mistakes mean I'm the next one in line?"

"Oh? That's rich coming from Miss-I-Slapped-You-For-No-Reason. Thank god it was me and not Rean, you would have slapped him again and not talked to him for a month."

"Girls I really don't think…" Emma tried getting in the middle of her and Laura.

Gaius and Millium both stepped in as well. "Let's all calm down here, we're all a bit tense."

She turned around while Laura mumbled off. "Let's keep walking".

A really tense silence dominated the next few hours of walking. No more columns of the provincial army went past them so they'd assumed that Trista had already fallen. They were actually walking on two columns themselves, one at each side of the road, after what happened earlier. Alisa, Gaius and Millium while Jusis and the other two girls took the right side.

Celdic was still a long walk away, and it was starting to get dark. This took way longer than anyone expected. The field study took them on train, which muddied their sense of distance. It was more than enough time for Alisa to mull over her argument with Laura, thinking of clever comebacks.

'Oh? So, you need someone like Rean to keep you in check, huh? The way of the sword and all that stuff?' 'Do you have a crush on him or something?' 'Take it out with Sara who has the hots for your dad, not me'

Sigh. This was petty even for her. And what's with Rean popping up here?!

"What's with the long face, Alisa? It's not good for wrinkes. Unless you like them in which case keep on doing that" Millium was facing her as she glided backwards, a big obnoxious smile on her face. She repelled the urge to chop her in the head, but laughed in the process. "Haha! Made you laugh. See, that's much better"

"Yeah, I guess it is" She glanced over and caught Laura looking at her before they both looked away flustered.

"Oh, for the love of…" Jusis walked to the middle of the road and stopped. "Just get it over with." As he pointed to both Alisa and Laura. Well thanks for the spotlight.

Laura walked up first, scratching the back of her head. "Uh. I didn't mean what I said. At least not in the way I said it."

"No, let me go first. It was my fault, I moved more than I should, and you're right, I shouldn't be on the frontline anyways. Shake hands?"

"Yeah." They were all taking a small break on the middle of the road after watching the quick make up. "But thanks to this we just realized something, I believe."

"Indeed, we have" Jusis looked at everyone. "There's too many of us. By now I assume that the provincial army knows that we're missing, and they'll be looking for a group of our number. At least that's what I assume they will do. Considering that they mobilized a huge number of soldiers to Trista, It's safe to assume that they geared up for war, and it's likely happening."

"So, what do we do?"

"We split up. Laura and I shouldn't have much problem walking through Bareahard or Legram once we get there, and Celdic is in my father's duchy. Emma herself can tag along if she wants." She nodded at them "And maybe even Millium? Although I'd much rather you took her with you."

"Hey, that's not very nice of you Mister Albarea, one would think you don't like my presence at your side!"

"That's exactly it."

She jumped at him, while Jusis just stopped her with his hand on her head. She kept running as everyone was reminded that she was just a kid.

"So that's the plan I guess. We split up? I guess we can make our way over to Roer but I don't really like my chances walking all the way over there."

Millium reacted by calling Airgetlam out. "Hey! He can carry us, probably."

"I'm sure the wind would feel really nice." Gaius wasn't half as opposed to the idea as he should be. Millium switched targets and went to Gaius, Jusis thanked him.

"See! Gaius gets it."

There was however a big problem with that. "We would be seen easily, I don't think we should stand out, not until we get to Roer at least. Or even once we get there."

The fork in the road that was just up ahead was the way that led them to Roer, if they were actually going with this plan they'd have to decide now. Well, the plan was already decided, it was more of a question of how they would go about it. They made their way as a team to the crossroads and quick goodbyes were said, vowing to meet again later down the line, once things calmed down.

"Well, I guess that's that…" Gaius waved at them one last time before he joined her as they walked. To be honest, her feet were starting to hurt. Even by their military training standards, they'd been walking a lot today.

Millium came flying back. She'd been hounding Jusis some more even after they'd split up, able to come back flying in an instant. "Guys! There's a truck coming!"

"A what?"

"A truck! It's coming this way from Celdic!"

"Is it the army?"

"No! It's a Reinford truck!"

It didn't take too much to convince the truck driver to actually give them a lift to Roer, as having people to talk to actually helped him not to fall asleep at the wheel. Or so he said. Not the most dedicated worker that the RF group had, not by a long shot. But hey, better than walking right?

After some small talk, however, that well ran dry. Thank god they were moving fast enough that they'd done like three hours of walking in just 30 minutes.

Millium had decided to follow them around discreetly, as she put it, from the sky. Alisa wasn't opposed to the idea because it allowed them to actually get inside the truck without the driver feeling threatened or anything by the number of people that he had to take around.

Her stomach growled loudly, much to her embarrassment and to Gaius and the driver's amusement. Blushed she turned to the window, feigning composure.

"We're about half an hour away of my favorite truck stop, an inn halfway to Roer. I normally go for dinner there, so maybe you guys can join me?"

The longest half an hour of her life went by as she tracked the shade of the trees get longer and longer as the sun set. Her thoughts occasionally drifted to the other groups, but she really couldn't do much for them anymore. She probably couldn't do much either way if they were here with her.

She wasn't a natural leader like Rean was, Jusis was much more of a leader than her. Nor was she as smart as Emma, or as strong as Laura and Gaius. She was just a really rich commoner, and it wasn't even her mira in the first place. Then what can I actually do for them?

"We're here" The truck stopped next to a bunch of normal orbal cars, to a small laid-back inn. She actually never even heard of this place, but then again, Erebonia was huge. The two met up with Millium as the driver went inside.

"No, I haven't been able to contact anyone. I suspect the entire orbal network is down. Maybe it's a problem from Crossbell, or something local. Can't be sure." She closed her ARCUS. "I also checked out Heimdallr from the distance and I still see smoke rising from there."

"Wait, you went to Heimdallr?"

"Sure did! Lammy is really fast!"

Gaius and Alisa shared a moment of exasperation.

"We thought you were watching us from above."

"Oh, I was! I got bored halfway through though. I went forward and saw an Inn and figured it was where you guys would stop in like 2 hours."

Alisa shook her head. "Did you check on Trista? Or did you see Rean or someone?"

"Trista is secure for what I've seen. It's probably already been taken entirely by the provincial army. Heimdallr, I only got to the outskirts, just to be sure I wouldn't be spotted, but it looked bad"

"Yeah… I imagine it did." They walked into the inn as they spoke, to find a bewildered driver.

"I'm sure I only talked to two of you."

"Oh no, we actually always were three!" She elbowed Gaius who tried to laugh.

"I need to stop drinking."

"Yup, would be a good call! It's not good for your long-term memory either!" Millium with the random medical trivia made the driver doubt for a few seconds while he stared at his pint of beer. He looked a Millium and then at the beer a couple of times before going back to drinking.

"It's not like I want to remember anything anyways." he said as he shrugged, after downing the entire thing in one big gulp. "You guys should order food, it takes forever here."

They took his advice and they moved up to the bar as a group. A really small girl that reminded her of the daughter of the shop owner at Trista was on the other side, probably not old enough to drink.

"What are you looking at? You probably can't even drink either."

Well, she had a point there.

"Oh, you look to be my age! Have you seen my sister around?"

"Your sister?"

"Long white hair, speaks as though she just woke up."

"No. Now are you going to order something?"

Aidios, the little girl was really not in a good mood today. They ordered whatever was fastest to make and went back to their seats, to wait on their food. In the meantime, the Reinford employee had gotten his food, so he was munching away gleefully.

Some hushing was heard as people congregated on an orbal radio at the far end of the inn.

"It's starting!" someone called out.

She slowly made her way over to the crowd, kind of curious about what was going on. All of a sudden, the room became quiet as a really low voice came through the radio.

"… here in sight of the Valflame Palace, the triumphant march of the noble alliance and their provincial armies, complete with their new 'soldats' units…"

Oh. Yeah, I guess Heimdallr is lost.

"… After the chancellor was shot, the invasion that was spearheaded by Duke Cayenne, succeeded in less than a day to secure the capital and proclaim that the noble alliance was to restore order to the nation."

A bunch of cheers came from the crowd. Someone was hugging the guy next to him while another one was crying tears of joy.

"… with this the coverage of the Battle of Heimdallr is over. It has been my pleasure to work for the Imperial Chronicle as a guest, but as of now I resign to my position as journalist…" The radio cut off as the one closest to it shut it off.

"Beers on me!" that same guy proclaimed, as everyone cheered. "To better times! To the death of the chancellor!"

Alisa recoiled, and made her way back to the table. Gaius was equal parts appalled and surprised at how Erebonians handled their political affairs. Granted he probably didn't know much about how politics are run anyways, but she made a mental note to remind him that this isn't normal at all.

Millium was just anxiously waiting for her food, not really minding all the talk, not even the chancellor's mention. She wasn't going to bring it up if Millium wasn't going to.

After what felt like eternity, their food came, along with the extra beers that were on the guy who shut down the radio. Clearly this establishment didn't really care much for the law either way. Figures this crowd would gather.

She wolfed down her food and opted to take a walk outside for fresh air, as the place was getting kind of loud for her liking, and she was used to factories.

Compared to the inside, the outside was cold and breezy, but it reminded her that this was actually not a dream, which was partially what she wanted to confirm as well.

"More like a nightmare, and I can't wake up."

She slapped herself twice, and after making sure that she still had her bow, just in case, she walked back in. Or at least she tried, as the door opened and slammed her to the side. Without even noticing, a couple of drunks had come out singing something about better times and how Cayenne was saving Erebonia once and for all.

No sense shouting at them, although her sore arm disagreed. She just nursed it a bit as she walked inside again. Everyone was pretty much done with their food by now, so all that remained was just paying and getting as far away from here as possible. Her opinion of the driver went up exponentially after he also shared his disgust for the situation and how bad it all was.

"People don't really realize what war is about. I don't know if you guys know what war is like but I can assure you, I once met this girl who graduated from Thors and went on to join the provincial army…" He went on and on about how war was bad and how they wouldn't understand because they were young.

'Of course, we know nothing about it!' Was what they were all muttering to themselves. Alisa was glaring at Millium every time she opened her mouth, trying to goad her out of revealing some state secret or something to the poor driver.

After driving for another couple of hours, Roer came into view. It was close to midnight already, which just made them all the more thankful when they finally parted with the driver, who let them off on the lower level of Roer. Getting inside the city wasn't as hard as they'd expected, partially because they were in a RF truck, was her guess, but that would probably change soon.

"Now's the real problem, what in Aidios' name do we do?"

Both Gaius and Millium looked at her, puzzled. "I thought you were the local?"

"Yeah, which is exactly why I can't show up to any of the places I know, it's the first place they would look for me."

"Let's just walk, we'll figure it out."

And so they did. They walked to the moving stairs and admired the night city, as Alisa herself did a bunch of times, from the RF building. It also creeped into view as they got to the upper floor.

"My mother is probably there, figuring out how to make more weapons to supply the Rogner army. Wait, maybe Angie can help us?"

"I don't think that she's going to be allowed out of her house, not after what happened in the mines. Not for a while either."

"Yeah, you're probably right…"

They kept exchanging ideas back and forth until they found themselves staring at the Roer Cathedral.

"Hey, Alisa? Isn't the church meant to help people in need?"

"Sure, I'd say so."

Gaius pointed at the church. "Then, what are we waiting for?"

"Oooh! I always wanted to sleep in a church!"

"Millium it's not something to be excited about!" she paused. "We have to leave tomorrow in the morning however, we can't risk staying here for too long, not with the RF building here."

"What about Nord? I'm sure my family would be more than welcoming."

"That's… not a bad idea. How, though?"

"The trains may run tomorrow? We better hope for that otherwise we might have to catch another Reinford truck to Nord.

"Oh goddess, not another one of those…" She rolled her eyes. "Fine, church, then Nord. I really have nothing else."

They all nodded as they made their way inside only to be greeted by a sister who was almost getting ready to close the building for the night.


	4. Chapter 3

"_Rean,_

_ I'm writing this letter while I lay awake on one of the benches of the Roer cathedral. I'm certain that this letter will never even reach you but just in case it does... I want to tell you that we're alright. We've been running from Trista ever since I told you to leave us behind. I know more than anyone how much that hurt you, but you have to trust in us as much as we trust you._

_ You probably will find this letter weird, I know. We normally talk face to face, drinking tea or over dinner. In fact, it's weird for me to write this. I just got so used to having you around that I only now came to realize that you are more than just our friend or our leader, as much as you hate that title. What I want to say is thank you. Thank you so much for everything. We've been together for something like a year and just the other day we were dancing away near the bonfire thinking about what next year would bring._

_ I'm sure that right now you would be cheering me up, with some heartfelt speech about how us being together would make everything fine, despite everything else crumbling. In fact, just thinking about what crazy thing you'd say to us at this moment is cheering me up alone. I'm quite sure that everyone else is also thinking the same thing. At least the ones that are not sleeping, like Millium is right now._

_ There are many things that we still need to talk about. I'm always dumping my problems on you, about how Mom's work irks me, or how Sharon is constantly telling her what I'm doing... but you rarely talk about yourself. I know I was so mean to you until we went to Celdic and I'm really sorry about that, but you know that. I know you and I also like to believe that I got to know how you ignore yourself for others._

_ -unreadable, crossed out paragraph-_

_ I can tell how you really love your family and how much you care about Elise and it really shows. The way you talk about Elise has changed over the last year. Did you notice that? No, I guess you would not... It was something I wasn't really sure about it myself until the other day by the bonfire. You would never have left her alone to ask me out to dance before. You've changed. We all have, but -crossed out-. I guess I don't even know what I'm saying right now. I'm sorry for the mess. Just know that I'll be there to help you with Elise, you just need to ask._

_ We've managed to shelter ourselves for the night in the cathedral. You know more than anyone that knocking on the RF's door wouldn't be the best thing at the moment... It's the best I could think about. I remember Angelica once told me that one of her friends had ran away from home and stayed overnight here. Gaius, Millium and I decided that we'd make a run for Nord early tomorrow, trying to get away from places where we could be easily identified just in case._

_ I'm sorry if there are parts crossed out or small water marks on the letter. It's been raining non-stop and the paper got a bit wet, but it's all I've got. I don't even know how this will get to you, or if someone else will read this letter if I drop it somewhere... I honestly don't know. I may as well pray to Aidios since I'm in her house, for this letter to somehow find it's way to you._

_ -crossed out-_

_ I guess I just want you to know that I miss you. -crossed out-_

_ Alisa."_

_Chapter 3_

_With Dreichels' Emblem Guarding Them_

Morning came with men thundering outside the cathedral to the rhythm of whistles.

"What's going on out there?" Gaius was busy putting his hair in order as he woke up. When he finally got to the door, Roer greeted him with an army parade.

"Oh, that's so cool!" Millium jumped up to get a good view from a window. "Too bad they probably all want to kill us, though."

"Millium! Hush. That's bad luck" Alisa also put her hand on the little girl's head to stop her from jumping so much.

They readied up in about 5 minutes and after a quick thank you to the cathedral's staff they left for the train station. During their field study they had caught a lift on the Courageous,but they had stopped on their way to Nord, so they kind of remembered the way.

"I'm telling you to let me through!" some loud businessman was shouting at the girl behind the counter. In fact, the station was full of people screaming.

"What's going on?" Alisa counted at least 2 guards that they'd have to be careful not to get close to.

"Those aren't RMP uniforms" Gaius made sure to look at them twice before saying that, however.

"Guess that Claire's people bailed on the railways then..." Millium's face betrayed her disappointment. "But the RMP was really strong in Roer... maybe...?" She wandered off in thought.

"How are we even going to get to Nord though?" Gaius scratched his head. He had gotten to know the crew of the train that got him to Nord and back but that was a different matter. They didn't even know if the trains were running given the circumstances.

Alisa tried her luck at the counter, but it was impossible to get past the dozen people with tickets in hand shouting obscenities at the poor clerk behind the desk.

"I don't like this" Gaius' hand hovered over the spear at his back for a few seconds. And he was right to be anxious. They were a group that stood out a lot, even if the entire station was a mess. "Did the RMP even fight on their way out? I don't see bullet holes or anything."

"I don't think so." Alisa scanned the train schedule board, but it was empty. "I also don't think that the trains are running at all. Some are scheduled, but they are all delayed..."

"I demand a train!"

The door thundered off the wall bouncing as an entire company of noble alliance soldiers entered. They pushed off the few stubborn clients that remained by the ticket counter and repeated their demand.

"Sir, I do not control the trains I have orders to no-"

"You now have orders to prepare a train for us to go to Zender gate. Pronto!"

"But I'm not a train operator there's no-"

"Now I said!"

Customers started to leave quietly through the gate. If they were in a hurry, they'd just been bumped to the rear end of the list anyways. Gaius however had other plans.

"You want to what!?"

"I'm pretty sure he said join them on the train." 

"I know what he said, Millium! The thing is that it's insane!"

"Now, hear me out. They don't know us, nor do they care. I can persuade them since I'm actually from Nord, something about needing to go there. It might work. At worst it doesn't work out and at best we get a ride to Nord."

"At worst it doesn't work out?! At worst they shoot us on sight!" She sighed, they really had no choice either way. "I... Well, fine. But you're talking to them."

"Sure."

In just a few minutes a train, in fact the same train that took them to Nord last time was prepared. The noble forces were apparently engaged with forces loyal to the old imperial regime up in Zander Gate. Of course, they knew who was holding out, since they had met him during their trip to Nord.

The soldiers, however, were surprisingly accommodating to taking them along. Gaius did present a solid excuse being from Nord himself. The officer in charge just waved him in saying that they'd be done with Vander in no time and he could go back to Nord by the end of the day.

"Well, it looks like Rogner is doing his part." Millium sat next to Alisa on the train.

Their wagon was empty, aside from them, a small mercy. The soldiers had taken the rear end of the train, and they were a lot. If they were actually found out they'd have no choice but to hope for the best and simply surrender.

Gaius, meanwhile, was talking to the train operator. They'd bonded over the numerous trips, and since Nord people don't really come and go that often, Gaius was not hard to remember.

"If Vander is really going to be defeated in no time then we might as well make use of that to get through to Nord as soon as possible. This might actually play in our favor." Alisa was gazing outside the window as she said that. The early morning farmland seemed so peaceful that she doubted for a second that the nation might be at war. A distant road was following the train tracks on the far side of the wagon.

It had been only a couple of hours into the uneventful trip that they realized it would not go down as peaceful as the countryside they were crossing. A small squad of soldiers was patrolling the train, surprised that anyone was actually in the train with them. They started asking questions

Normal questions, not a lot of people go to Nord, of course. Not when war was around the corner as well.

"But wait, you are his friends or something?"

"Yes. We met in Celdic a few months ago and I was going to visit his family."

"Oh, so you're dating or something."

"N-y-yes, exactly!"

"Hey, get a load of this!" One of the soldiers, clearly intoxicated, called out to one of his friends.

"Look at the broad that this nord dude scored!"

"No way dude, totally hot chick!"

"Hey Mal! You're from Celdic, how come you never score any chicks like this. Show us your friends next time!"

Alisa and Gaius were faking nervous laughs. They were not faking the nervous part though. The intoxicated soldiers left after a few more remarks, being almost as loud as the train's engine itself. Collective sighs were heard as soon as they closed the door.

"Well that was close enough." Millium suddenly jumped out from the toilet. "I was thinking I'd have to get Lammy to smack a few of them senseless. I'm sure they would just topple with a small nudge though..."

"We may have left Roer too soon." Alisa was eyeing a black smoke cloud in the far distance. Clearly Vander was not going down without a fight. "What if we land in the middle of a warzone?"

Gaius opened the windows of the train and called on his hawk.

"I see." Both girls again looked quizzically at him. "Zio says that there's no fighting going on at the moment, apparently it's just wreckage from an earlier battle."

"Which also explains the reinforcements..." Millium pointed with her head to the other wagons.

The hawk spread its wings and darted back into the sky.

"So, what's the plan once we get to the end of the line? Just wait and see if they let us in? What if there's a fight again?" Gaius was looking around in his bag searching for something.

"We'll just have to wait an-" A musket shot on the wagon next to them interrupted them.

Immediately they all jumped to action, Gaius and Alisa stacked up on the door waiting to ambush whoever came through. But no one did. In fact, they only heard a couple more shots and laughter.

"What...?" Alisa peeked through the windows in the doors. Neither Gaius nor she could make out what was going on, so they decided to cross into the other wagon. As they walked inside, they saw the windows were down on the side while a bunch of soldiers were forming a semi-circle around a couple of them holding their muskets on the frame of the window for more stability.

They were shooting at something way up in the sky. Millium came in bursting in a few seconds later, which didn't even startle the soldiers who just nonchalantly looked at her before going on with their shooting gallery.

Millium made a beeline for Gaius and tugged him down to her level. "They're shooting at your hawk!" her voice was not the usual cheerful tone.

Gaius' eyes twitched, or at least Alisa thought they did as he grabbed his spear and stalked to the soldiers.

"That's my hawk you're shooting at!"

"Bite me." one of the soldiers took another shot.

"Ooh that was close!"

Alisa tugged at Gaius from the back. He didn't notice it but now the entire wagon was looking at them.

"I said. That's my hawk you're shooting."

Gaius grabbed his spear a bit more firmly.

"Gaius!" Alisa tried pleading with him.

"Ok, you know what, this isn't fun anymore" The drunk soldier dropped the rifle to the side. "What's your problem?" He looked at the Nordman, apparently completely unaware of what he was talking about.

"Oh, look! He can actually talk like a person. You nomads think you can treat Erebonian soldiers like that?"

Another drunk soldier showed up on his side. A couple more of them also started making their way up to the commotion

Gaius and Alisa started backing away slowly, as if stuck in the middle of a pack of feral dogs.

"You know what? You Nord people don't know that we let you live because we feel like it. Were it up to Rogner he'd have invaded your lands long ago. And evidently we would have little problem taking it."

"Uh I'm sure that this is just an overreaction on both sides let's just-" Alisa was cut short by the sound of a musket hitting a window with the stock, shattering the glass.

"Oh, look what you've done you idiot!" Another drunk soldier was about to start beating the soldier who broke the window.

"Run!" Alisa ran back into the other compartment with Gaius quickly in tow. Closing the doors behind them in record time. It wasn't long before the soldiers started shouting, partially trying to quell the fight that started between ranks and what had just happened with them.

"What the hell is going on?" The train's engineer showed up as well, having heard the gunshots.

"I'm sorry but it seems that the soldiers are-"

_Thud._

"We need to get out of here!" Alisa grabbed her bow and left Gaius alone to block the thumping door.

"Gaius get back!" Millium called Airgetlam. "Lammy! Hold the door!"

"Well that's more efficient" Gaius grabbed his spear from the floor and backed away as told. "I'm not sure if this will just blow over..."

"Can't we detach the wagons or something?" Millium guessed, trying to catch a glimpse of the joint sections of the wagons from the windows.

"I'd have to be outside, but we're moving..." The engineer was looking paler by the second. "There's a switch that we have to operate to detach each car. We normally just do it once we're stopped for obvious reasons..."

"Do we have to whack them real hard or something?"

"No, they're levers... but I guess we do smack 'em around a bit..." He removed his cap before going back to the engine room thinking he'd be able to figure out something. He came back a few moments later, strapping on what appeared to be an orbal revolver to his waist.

"Go at them from the roof! Lord Rogner will interrogate them personally!"

"Aye aye sir!"

Gaius looked to the ceiling, half expecting to hear footsteps, but none came. "I guess that they are just loud for being loud's sake."

"What if we used the rooftop as well?" Alisa ventured. "Can we hit the switches from there?"

"Not unless your arm's as long as Valflame Palace."

Alisa smiled at him and flashed her bow.

"Wait but then you'll break the train's joints!"

"Even better in this case." She started scanning the roof. "Now, how do I get up there…?"

"B-but then the train!"

"There, a hatch." Gaius pointed with his spear to a small square piece of the roof, just out of reach from their hands. "I don't think we have a choice on this matter to be honest" Gaius put down his spear on a seat and prepared to give Alisa a boost.

Alisa looked down and hesitated for a brief instant before footsteps started echoing from the rooftop.

"I swear if you so much as move your head-"

Alisa faked punching Gaius in the face.

"Oh no, I'm not going down with Rean."

By now a fond and very stupid memory, the sudden quip made her chuckle. She moved to the back of the train wagon while Gaius took a knee, locking his hands to give Alisa a place to step into.

"Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be." The train driver was now holding Alisa's bow, to let her jump more freely. "I just hope my lacrosse training helps here. On three?" He nodded. "One… Two…" She began running.

"Three!"

At her top speed, she quickly caught Gaius' hands which gave her a final push to jump and barely grasp the ladder to the hatch, with a big groan as she tried to climb it.

"Are you O-" Alisa smacked Gaius with her feet.

"Don't even DARE to look up!"

"I won't! Just get up there quickly and drop the ladder."

After wiggling her legs around a bit she managed to climb up the stairs, not before noticing that the stairs were held in place by a padlock.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" She finished climbing the stairs only to see, in the distance, a squad of provincial army soldiers doing the same thing she was. "They're coming!"

Millium, who up to now had been quiet, decided it was now time to stop holding back. "Lammy! Break down the doors!"

"Wait wha-" Gaius couldn't finish showing his disapproval before Airgetlam punched through both doors in one fell swoop, almost surely hitting a few soldiers in the process. The shock gave Alisa a few seconds to think clearly. She had to get the padlock or go on the offensive. She saw a glint on the train driver's hip. "Quick! Pass me that!"

The train driver then threw her his revolver. It almost hit her straight in the face, but it flew past her. She threw herself at the gun, trying to stop it from sliding down the side and out of her reach. This was not how she thought her day would go.

While they had learned how to operate orbal guns, even revolvers, back in Thors, she never expected to not be using her trusty bow in these situations. She was not wielding an almost foreign gun to her. While she knew of the advantages of it…

She took aim and fired at one of the soldiers, only to almost lose her grip with the recoil. "Man… how does Machias even do this!?"

Alisa started walking as fast as she could towards the gap between wagons which was a few dozen meters away. And another few dozen meters away, lay the enemy soldiers. They had not expected to be shot at, so they were taking cover by laying as prone as they could or crouching.

"Yo, I didn't sign up for this!" One of the soldiers turned in panic and ran away, distracting the rest of the soldiers as they exchanged glances or tried to stop him. She shot a couple of times, her shots bouncing off the wagon. The soldiers were either too drunk to aim properly or they were really scared at the blonde girl firing back at them. She took the chance to hit the deck right next to the gap and take a look.

She couldn't make heads or tails of the entire thing, however. It was just too much to just expect her to know what to shoot in this case. So, she opted for the simpler option. Just shoot something and pray to the goddess. A bullet grazed her hair and she saw a few strands of gold fall next to her. "It's now or never." She said as she jumped down, almost slipping down onto the train tracks. "Who the hell designed these trains!?"

She looked around twice but found nothing. The reduced space she was in was also extremely stifling, and her chest was getting in the way of actually seeing below her. She had to pray for the best and try to get it with her feet. Her foot got stuck on something. "This is it." She slammed her foot down so hard it even hurt her.

_CLANK_

The pressure from the car at her back subsided almost instantly, as it slowly gained distance on her. She didn't have time to relax however, as she heard the soldiers start shouting again. Soon enough they were aiming at her from the other car. Bullets started hitting the train, missing her somehow. "Guys…? Help me up?" She was dead in the water. She tried climbing but she slipped almost instantly. She had to fight.

She held the revolver on one hand as she grasped the train handle, trying to get at least one shot away. Alisa wouldn't fall without a fight. After aiming, she shot the revolver one handed. This time it really did fly off her hand. She grimaced as pain jolted up her hand. A bullet hit the train handle as she tried grasping it with both hands.

She fell. But she did not hit anything.

"Are you OK?"

"Is she hearing us?"

"Let me see, her eyes are open but…"

She was back in the wagon, staring up at Airgetlam and Millium. She was flat on her back. Gaius was still looking at the wagon behind them as they gained more and more distance. The shots had already ceased.

"You can thank Lammy for that rescue! He even made sure your skirt didn't move the other way!"

She quickly checked, and apparently it was true. The train driver gave her a hand and she got back up to her feet. "I'm sorry about the revolver, it just flew off my hand" He just laughed.

"Girl don't worry about it. I'm surprised you even managed to get off a few shots. It does pack quite a punch. Did, rather, goddess knows where it's at now." She took a look around, and saw the mess they'd done to the wagon in the fighting. Wood splinters here and there, her bow strewn over some seats and even broken glass on the floor. But the engine was still working no problem.

"This is still not a good situation. Those men were going to Nord." Gaius whistled after walking to what remained of a window. Zio was the reason they'd gotten into this scuffle in the first place. He came in flying, unscathed apparently. It flew around in circles a few times and dropped something that hit the floor with a thud. He landed on Gaius' arm and earned a headpat.

"Well, guess we don't have to worry about the revolver anyhow…" Zio had brought back the orbal revolver. It was quite heavy, but then again, hawks are strong. The roar of the engine amplified almost tenfold as the light disappeared around them.

"Oh right. We still had to cross this tunnel…" the driver turned back to the front and told everyone to follow him. He pointed towards the map pinned to the wall next to the driver's seat and told them that they were roughly an hour away from the end of the line.

"If the Rogner forces managed to tell the rest of them about this whole incident here… We won't make it out alive." Gaius noticed an orbal radio "Maybe we can use this for something?"

"No, it won't work in the tunnel, and besides who would we contact?" Alisa started tinkering with it, however. "Wouldn't our best bet be to just leave the train after we leave the tunnel?"

"They'd catch up to us in no time once they realize it. Our best best…" Gaius scanned the map fruitlessly, while Millium had a blank face as she stroked Airgetlam.

The sun blinded them as they got out of the pitch-dark tunnel. A massive grassland greeted them, open to both sides. Alisa saw that the old road that was bordering the train tracks also reappeared.

"What if… we just claim that we were attacked, and the wagons broke off?" Everyone ignored Millium. While it was true that they had been attacked, it was obvious that they'd stop them and interrogate them, and that would surely get them caught. And, maybe, executed. She shuddered at the thought. "I'm just saying this because that armored car doesn't look friendly at all"

"Yeah, no. Gaius can you try the ra- What?!"

"I said, that armore-"

"No, I got that! I mean why didn't you scream it out louder!?"

"Because it still isn't shootin- nevermind"

The right-side windows shattered under a hail of fire. "Aidios, just what is going on in this country?" the train operator ducked inside the driver wagon with his revolver again at his side.

Alisa, finally having her bow back, muttered something about how unfair this was and pressed the two buttons on the handle to make the arrows actual fire arrows. She managed to get a few shots through the now broken glass, but the arrows didn't even reach the armored car. It was too far away.

A brief moment of silence was broken by what Alisa could only describe as a horrible sound coming closer to them.

"Missile!" Millium propped into action faster than everyone expected her to. Airgetlam burst out the side of the train, leaving a hole in the middle of the already battered wagon, to take the missile head on. The shockwave knocked Alisa off her feet but another missile was coming their way.

Alisa ran to the back of the wagon, bow in hand, to try and shoot it off before it managed to hit them, but Millium's puppet beat her to it as well.

The third one came from the left side.

She got knocked flat into the right-hand seats. It took her a few seconds to notice that Gaius was holding to what remained of a seat while trying to keep Millium from falling off the train at the rear end. "Gaius!" She grabbed the Nordman and dragged both of them back into the wagon. Smoke was starting to build, even with the massive holes providing ventilation.

The driver came back from the front coughing through the black smoke, but they all saw the white in his face. "She's dead" And sure enough, the train started slowing down really fast.

Glancing at both sides, they had massive holes in the wagon, peppered with small gunshot holes at the right side and the engine was as good as gone. Besides the rear part of the train had also seen a beating thanks to Airgetlam and Gaius charging through to stop the Rogner soldiers.

This was the end of the line for them. Three armored cars flanked them and a fourth one covered the front in case they somehow fixed the train in time, which was, of course, impossible for them. The four of them dropped their weapons and just put their hands up, resigned to fate. Three squads of soldiers came in at the same time, from both sides and the rear. They, however, were more puzzled than them when they saw them.

"Uh… we were told that Rogner soldiers were in this train… not kids" The soldiers, still puzzled, lower their weapons. They were bearing the emblem of the 3rd imperial division. They walked the four of them off the train as it slowly caught fire and they brought them to one of the armored cars, while they proceeded to tell them what got them in this mess in the first place.

"Wait, I remember a few kids from Thors that went to Nord. In fact, you look exactly like those Nords from the settlement" He pointed at Gaius. "Man I'm sorry, we didn't know you guys were there. We just got a tip from one of the RMP guys in hiding over in Roer that a company of soldiers was moving up to Zender gate"

The one that was supposedly in charge of that raid came up to them after giving his rifle to a subordinate. "We thought it was really weird that the train only had one wagon, but since you guys were going full steam we thought something was up. I apologize. Even after everything you did last time you went to Nord" He bowed to them, apologizing once again.

"No, no. Don't worry about it. Truth be told we didn't know how to deal with the situation if we did go all the way to Zender gate anyways, so this is kind of a gift from the goddess herself" Alisa bowed as well and she saw her legs, a few bruises and scratches but nothing too serious. Gaius and Millium somehow managed to get out of the entire ordeal pretty much unscathed as well.

"Let me take you to Zender Gate, we know a way around the Rogner forces at the train station."


	5. Chapter 4

They had been walking for hours by that point. The sounds of war had long subsided by then, but they had to still move, wary of provincial soldiers looking for students that ran away. It was almost sunset before they managed to make it to the outskirts of Celdic.

Their objective was clearly defined now: Legram. What was not considered so far was the huge number of big hulking armored machines that went by them a few times as if sliding through the road, accompanied by armored cars and soldiers.

"S called them soldats, right?" Laura hunkered down by a few bushes, makeshift cover from a truck that was going to go past them briefly.

"Yes, I believe that's what she said." Emma had taken off her glasses and let her hair loose, more camouflage from a possible detection.

Celdic was finally in sight for the three-man crew, but before they even saw it they were assaulted by a series of loud explosions. But no one was firing at them, not that they could notice. In fact, if one saw the explosions they came from a few tanks at the gates, firing as high as they could.

Really puzzled by this, they walked briskly through bushes to get a better look. The salvos finally stopped after what felt like an hour, but it was probably closer to a full minute. Night was setting on the town, marking the end of the longest day that Jusis ever had.

There was nowhere they could go but forward, so they steeled themselves and walked past the guards who were too busy talking with the crew of the tank, apparently celebrating something. They didn't bat an eyelash at them.

"For soldiers they sure seem little on edge." Laura was glancing sideways at both sides of the gates as they walked inside Celdic. The main street was now lit up with orbal lamps and the white reflection of the moon. They sat down next to the small plaza next to the church, sore feet requesting a break in a not real polite way.

"I cannot believe that we walked this far today…" Emma was by far the worst one off. She was wearing long boots which had seen little use during the school year apparently. A cat approached them and nuzzled against Emma's legs. The cat seemed really fond of Emma, and she took to petting it without a doubt. It was purring after just a few strokes, as she showed how to properly handle a cat through years of experience.

Mildly awed by her display, it was a pity that it came to an end abruptly as the firing restarted. A small crowd quickly made their way into the church shortly after that, all in civilian clothing.

"Are they expecting an attack or something?" Laura got back to her feet, stumbling a bit at first, remembering her feet were not in tip top shape now. But no, it wasn't an attack. After a few moments, they made their way to the Celdic Market, at least its doors, before finding another group of soldiers bunched up next to a radio, with civilians a bit behind, some celebrating others with somber expressions looking at the soldiers.

They moved carefully and deliberately around the plaza and found themselves staring at a couple of rowdy looking citizens that were not letting anyone get close to the market manager's house, for some reason. Maybe he was away? That's what they settled on after passing the main plaza.

Of course, the train station was not open, but there was also no sign of the RMP. Neither was there any sign of a battle taking place. However, it was night, and they had not rested since they were back in Thors. They were at their very limit. They turned to the market, thinking that maybe some food might give them clarity.

They got food and sat by the tables at the end of the market. They had already been seen by a couple of guards and nothing really stood out about them, so no one bothered them. Had they been using their uniforms it would have been a different thing.

However, despite them having caught a break, they had another problem to deal with now. They couldn't make their way to Legram or even much further than Celdic on foot. They could, but it'd take a long time and they weren't sure if arrest warrants would go out against them.

_Chapter 4_

_Following the Mistral Winds_

"Excuse me, my lady, you're not supposed to eat it that way."

Startled, to say the least, Emma turned halfway to the right and found an old man, standing just over her shoulder while pointing at her food. He did not look like a beggar, but neither did he look like a normal individual.

"Oh, I thank you." Emma looked back to her food, but the man took the fourth seat for himself as he brought up his food, which consisted of just bread and some wine.

"I mean no offense, but who are you?" Laura was half amused, half confused at this behavior. The man however proceeded to eat. After a few seconds they decided to carry on. After all, the market was kind of crowded and a man eating alone would take up an entire table for himself.

"So, uh... you kids are travelling?"

"We are. We were travelling from Roer to Legram for a few days."

"Oh Roer! That's a long way from here. But no trains came in... you must have walked all the way."

"Well, we didn't walk all the way from Roer, but yes, we travelled on the roads."

"So what business did you have in Legram?"

"I… uh. I'm going back home." Laura took a sip of her drink after saying that.

"Legram is a magical place, I remember way back when, we went to visit the Viscount on one occasion..."

The three shared glances.

"Excuse me, do you know the Viscount?"

"Yes, young boy. Once upon a time..." He mumbled off while he took another bite of his bread.

The ruckus from the provincial army finally died down as it got late, and Celdic was back to what was normal, according to the old man. He was really intent in talking to them and kept them entertained talking about his good times from long ago. They were really in no hurry since they wouldn't be going anywhere tonight, and he was kind of amusing in his own, well-mannered speech too.

Not half an hour went by before they were done with their food and they realized that they didn't have any kind of lodging, not to mention the fact that they didn't really take much with them when they left Trista.

Excusing himself, Jusis left to get a look around Celdic now that everything had died down. Laura and Emma kept on listening to the fun stories he was sharing. He had crossed the market gate and was back at the plaza, where he noticed everything had calmed down quite a bit. He approached the market manager's home, this time attempting to talk to the people who blocked his path earlier.

The self-proclaimed guard told him that he was not here, that he was in Bareahard talking with Duke Albarea, something he wouldn't understand if he was not from Celdic. It wasn't a personal attack, more of a you're too young to understand stuff like that.

"I see. Well, regrettably, I'm stuck in Celdic for the night. Could you point me to the inn please?"

"Sure…" He pointed across the plaza. Jusis turned and saw people piling on the doorway, trying to get in. He looked at the guard who just shrugged at him. "Hey, it's not my problem you didn't book a room." Figuring it was useless to even try to get inside the inn, he strolled down to the railway station, which he knew was closed, but now there were a couple of signs hanging.

"_The train services will resume tomorrow. We apologize for the inconvenience" _Was what one read. The other one was a bit more ominous. _"The railway is now under direct control of Duke Albarea, any and all trespassers will be arrested"_.

"Well this is rich." He snarked back at the makeshift sign. No sign of the RMP either, but he did see a couple of skid marks off the side of the railroad tracks, or so he thought. He walked back to the plaza, only to bump into a kid selling the Imperial Chronicle.

After being forced by the obnoxious brat to buy one as an apology for the really minor bump, he sat down and opened the Chronicle.

"_THE IMPERIAL CAPITAL UNDER SIEGE_

_The first imperial division valiantly holds the line!"_

The extra issue of the Chronicle was just a couple of pages long on how the chancellor was shot and about how the noble faction took arms and rebelled against centralized rule from Heimdallr. Which was basically what they'd seen all year on their field studies. However, the sudden situation with Crossbell sparked a response against what seemed like a weakened government.

"Truly lacking in noble ways, noble faction." Even if he said that, he understood their plight, not the actual shooting of the chancellor, but being son of Albarea taught him that nothing was black or white. Much less in Erebonia. But even then, it always fell to the normal working citizen to deal with the screw ups from above.

He closed the piece of paper and set it down next to him while he looked around the revolutionized Celdic. He recalled the rough description of the place from Rean, back during their first field trips. It roughly matched the place, minus the whole army presence, he recalled Rean saying something about problems with the local guardsmen, however.

After a few minutes, Laura and Emma joined him in the plaza. They were still short of lodgings and the inn was full of soldiers, apparently celebrating. They'd tried walking in a few times, but it was just too full to even think of getting a room.

So, they sat on the benches by the main plaza while staring at the fountain. The cat that nuzzled Emma when they first arrived showed up again, this time bringing a couple of children with it. They exchanged small talk until they saw the old man walk up the stairs of the Celdic Market. He didn't really have much problems doing so, but the three kids jumped up to help him up the stairs. He hadn't had enough wine to be tipsy or anything, and he wasn't old enough to warrant help.

Interest piqued, Jusis went up to offer help as well. "Oh thank you, young boy. We meet again!"

"Think nothing of it." He walked beside him, as he was now on flat land, no stairs in sight. The kids left waving and running, the cat following them out of sight behind the church. Emma and Laura joined them for the walk. The old man was heading home, so they decided to walk him there.

"Are you sure? I mean I don't mind the company, but... you kids surely have better things to do."

"It's fine, we don't really have much to do other than wait for the morning." Laura looked back at the inn, and sure enough, it was still bustling. "Besides, we have to wait for the inn to quiet down before we try to get a room."

"Oh, do you not have a room? But surely that's the first thing you looked for once you got here..."

This time, Emma jumped in the conversation. "My friends aren't really used to travelling, so they are still learning."

Technically, true. But still, both felt a bit offended at the remark. "Well, normally our lodgings are taken care of by the time we arrive. This was... a different situation" Laura glared at her Class President. They did not need unwanted attention, and she was right.

The old man kept walking out of Celdic, the three of them still in tow. After a few good dozen minutes of walking they ended up in a small shack, pretty much abandoned, close to the railroad track leading to Bareahard.

"Well... Home sweet home!" The old man flashed a smile at them and walked over a small battered picket fence. "You're free to stay for a while here. Nothing much to offer you I'm afraid, but I do have a couple of extra beds."

Gladly, they took up the offer. The inn wouldn't have any rooms available anyways. The old man seemed delighted to have some company over as well, so much that he almost stumbled through the door telling them to go in.

It was a pretty small house but calling it a house was a disservice to actual real estate. It was a mess, and evidence of leaks on the roof showed on the wooden floor. It was a small L shaped home, with a small living room to the right, including cracked windows, and to the left a few rooms lined up against the wall.

It was late, but not late enough to go to bed. They sat down by the table on the living room at the behest of the old man, as he put on the kettle. It was only now that it began to sink in, and adrenaline stopped pumping through. Normally they'd be studying, or doing some stupid thing that Crow sent them off to do...

His face betrayed a grimace, but no one noticed. The girls were also looking down, probably finally feeling some relief at having an actual place to stay the night. But there were a couple of huge problems. They were positive that Alisa's group was fine, but Rean had gone north and that's the last they heard of him. Crow had betrayed them and Machias, Fie and Elliot were, for all they knew, fighting in Trista.

"I heard that Trista held out for a long time." The old man came back with some ornate tea cups. Delicately placing them down in the middle of the table, he proceeded to serve the tea to each one of them and, perhaps out of habit, didn't take a seat until they all looked at him quizzically. "Oh, I'm sorry. I don't normally drink tea."

"No... That's..." Emma cut herself off and looked at the cup of tea intently.

"These are really ornate cups, where did you get them?" Jusis grabbed the saucer and brought the cup to his face to smell the fragrance. "This is also fine tea... I'm confused."

"Hah! One must not be misled by book covers! Even still, I'm surprised you can tell the difference..." He looked at his posture, the way he was holding the saucer, legs crossed, almost sneering at him through his golden locks. "You must be some high class noble."

Emma, trying to copy Jusis, almost spilled her tea. A bit spilled on the saucer, so she put them down on the table, a bit forcefully. "I'm sorry, I'm not used to these cups."

"I apologize, my lady, my lord didn't like eastern cups." This startled the three students.

"I thought it was odd." Laura looked at the cups. She was not the best one in court affairs but she was quite sure she recognized that the caps were branded with a crest. "Are you a noble by any chance?"

"Hah, no, no. A noble wouldn't live like this."

"I don't recognize the crest..." Jusis scanned the place, looking for more banners or anything that could resemble something from noble birth.

"You won't find any, young lord. I was just a lowly butler." A small hint of sorrow in the way he talked about him being one told them enough.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"It's... all in the past now. These cups and a few other mementos are what reminds me of my lord." A few minutes of uncomfortable silence flooded the room, as only Emma struggled with her tea cup, perhaps more now because they were actually mementos.

"I must ask... why serve tea in these cups?"

"You three… remind me somewhat of my past." They stared back at him.

"The young boy here reminds me a lot of my lord, back when he was still young. Of course, he did not have golden hair. His was pure fire. You, on the other hand" He looked at Laura. "Remind me of his daughter. She always did have that strong look about her, and she also wielded a big sword just like you."

He turned to Emma, who was sitting in the middle of the three. "You however... remind me of something else entirely."

He took a sip of his, by now cold, tea. He took a moment to get up and bring out a photo album, looked through a few pages but then put it back in. He brought out another one and dusted it off before putting it back.

"Laura is this anyone under Arseid's counties?" Jusis looked at the teacup again. It seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn't really put a face to it. It probably is an old, extinct line of nobility.

"No. I was about to ask you the same thing. Maybe Rean would know?"

"No, I don't think so. He never was really big on nobility, anyways" They were interrupted by a book slamming the table due to its weight.

"Now where did I put that photo..." He flipped through pages. After a few seconds he found the photo he was looking for, being used as a bookmark.

It was the old man standing awkwardly next to a stunning woman, with long hair and glasses, wearing a beret. She was winking to the camera.

They all looked at the picture, stunned by the beauty of the woman. A daughter?

"This woman and his friend or lover, I never was clear on that, came to check up on me regularly the last couple of years. He's taking the photo."

Sure enough, the photo was taken out by the front of the house. Maybe during better times, but it was certainly day, so they could see it a bit better than they did at night.

"I don't understand, how is she similar to-" Jusis looked at Emma who looked as though she'd seen a ghost. Emma did not tear her eyes away from the photo.

"This was taken roughly 2 years ago, the last time I saw them. I hope nothing happened to them. I don't know what I see of her in you, young girl, but you have an air about you that looks like her."

"Oh... I..." Emma was still lost for words, growing whiter.

"How did you meet them?" Laura took the Emma out of the spotlight.

"They came to me actually. Some stuff happened which meant I was left without a job, but I managed to pull through. I made this home with my own two hands. And a bit of help from the people of Celdic, Otto's been very good to me."

"He was very good to us too when we came on our field stu-"

Jusis coughed and Emma snapped back to the real world.

"Oh, I know who you are, don't worry about it." He looked at Jusis who had the biggest reaction.

"Whatever could you mean?"

"That you're students of Thors." Silence reigned for a few seconds.

"You're safe with me. In fact, I don't think anyone here cares about Thors' students, not today at least"

"What... gave it away?"

"I know almost everyone here, even if I don't speak with them. You show up at night, on this day, and obviously don't know where to spend the night. Nobles without retainers are like fish out of the water."

"Haha. I guess you're right."

"You did quite well actually, I'm surprised. I've seen useless nobles by the droves"

"So, since you know our secret, mind sharing yours?"

He served some more tea before sighing, loudly, remembering old wounds.

"It was so silly, and it happened in an instant. One moment I was the butler of a low level noble, enjoying life with a nice family. The next moment, the Chancellor decided to build a railroad track right over our home. There's no denying the chancellor, in case you didn't notice. Unless there wasn't until today." He chuckled at the snide remark. "We were just given money and told to move elsewhere. When I say 'we' I mean my lord."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. We were homeless and had less money than everything was worth anyways. It all started falling apart after that. My lord resorted to alcohol to relieve the pressure and it broke the family apart. Without a home, everyone took a part of the money and just left on their own ways. I went with my lord."

They looked around, there was no lord around.

"Yeah. He died, in a really stupid and tragic way. Comical, even, all things considered."

The house trembled as a train went by. "Huh, I guess they restored service. Not bad for Albarea." Jusis shifted uncomfortably at the comment, but the old man went on. "We were staying at Saint Arkh for a few days while we looked for a new home and my lord looked for something to do, now that his fiefdom was basically gone, when, out of nowhere, he remembered his daughter."

"Remembered?"

"Yes. I'm sorry I never quite got your name, lady."

"Laura."

"Yes, Laura. He'd fallen so hard into alcohol that he forgot about his daughter. To be fair, she'd gone to make her own life as a knight or something, but we never knew what really happened to her since she disappeared for like 6 months. This happened while she was away. In any case, he suddenly remembered her, and ran out as if possessed. He made his way to the railway station in an instant. This was drunk, mind you."

"Did he...?"

"No, not at all. I was with him and he ordered 2 tickets for Jurai, for some reason. After the train came we boarded it normally. He apparently had a vision or something that Jurai was holding her daughter safe for him to find her. He never got to Jurai."

"I... see." Jusis composed himself after the story. He'd never heard anything like this, but then again, Erebonia was a big nation. Maybe Hayarms would know.

"So, what happened to his daughter?"

"We never knew, or at least I never did. Maybe she doesn't even know, or maybe she found that the railroad track is now all over her home and she figured it was all in the past now."

Another train blasted past the house, rocking the windows in the process.

"Don't worry about them, they're used to the beating by now." He looked at the windows, which apparently hadn't failed him yet. "Maybe you should go to sleep and get up early to catch one of these trains."

"That's a good idea. It got really late anyhow."

"Make yourselves at home." He got up put down the teacups to be washed tomorrow morning, as he went to the first room of the two rooms available.

Figuring they'd better get some shut-eye sooner rather than later they walk over to the second room and find only 1 big bed. Without a word, Laura closed the door locking Jusis out.

He sighed.

"I guess It's the sofa for me." He backed away and saw a sofa, complete with even cat scratch marks on the side. He guessed the cat was not home, or it was a really old one. Letting himself drop he finally managed to get some true rest, but his mind wasn't resting at all. There were still plenty of things to consider. Would they make it to Legram on train? What happened to Rean? Is he ok? 

"Damn it." He sat, completely unable to sleep. He went through his bag and tore a page off his notebook.

"_Rean._

_You better not have given up on life yet._

_I'm not sure if you're going to be getting this letter, tomorrow, the day after, or even if you are getting it, but things were really hectic after we made you leave. Alisa is fine, since I know you care about her, at least last I checked she was fine. I'm stuck in Celdic for the night and we're making our way to Legram first thing in the morning._

_We did something amazing in the first few minutes of you being gone as our leader. We all split up. Machias, Elliot, Fie, Alisa, Gaius, Millium... We're all split up. Maybe it's for the best, but maybe not, we don't know. I don't know. You're normally the one that is there to tell us that everything is going to be ok, or to put Machias in his place for being an obnoxious pretentious 2__nd__ grade student._

_About Crow... I know how much he means to you. To all of us. But we don't have time to dawdle and think about that now. We must make sure that we all stay together as much as possible from now on even if it means abandoning what we think is important._

_To be honest, I'm not sure about going to Legram. What I saw today was all my father's fault. As it was back when we went to Bareahard during our field study. He was always one to make mistakes, but my brother was always there to hold him back. I don't know what Rufus is up to, but I've half a mind to go to Bareahard and try to put everything back into place. Maybe I could even stop further bloodshed._

_But above all. I'm a noble. I will see Laura and Emma safely to Legram for sure, as it is my noble duty to protect commoners like Emma. I will, however, not hesitate to go back home if I see that this situation is getting out of hand.  
_

_I just hope that you're fine, Rean. We've got similar circumstances, but I cannot turn away from what I know is my duty._

_Send the baron my regards._

_Jusis"_

"Oh, writing. That's something I've not done in a while."

Jusis folded the letter up before leaving it back on the table. "I appreciate the hospitality, but did you need to eavesdrop?" The old man chuckled.

"I didn't want to interrupt, you looked very intense while writing it."

"Yeah. I was just remembering my noble duties and telling my friend about them."

"Are you going to send that letter? It might not make it through what with all that happened today."

"You're right. I guess this was more self-indulgence than an actual letter."

"I could always hold on to it and send it later." Jusis looked at him for a few seconds.

"Yes, I guess that would be a good idea." He handed the letter to him after writing _"Ymir, Baron Schwarzer"_ on the backside.

"I heard Ymir is lovely, never been sadly."

"It really is. I'm trusting you with this letter. I hope my trust is well placed."

"Yes, my lord."

The old man went back to his room, taking the letter with him. Jusis, on the other hand, now felt his concentration doze off and force him to finally try to close his eyes.

He woke up a couple of hours later with the train rattling the house to its foundation.


	6. Chapter 5

"What do you mean you can't open the gate?!"

"We didn't know you'd come back while the fighting was still going on, Machias!" Towa pulled on the iron gates of Thors, George was working with his welder, just out of sight, but close enough for the flashes of light to be seen.

An explosion shook the town again. Fie grabbed both her guns and pointed down the hill. "We don't have that much time!"

"Just... a few..." George dropped the welder and started kicking the gate.

It moved so fast it slammed to the other side, almost knocking Towa off her feet. She grabbed her orbal pistol from the floor. "George! I told you to warn me!"

"I'm sorry it just flew!"

"Fie!" Elliot called out to her and the three of them ran inside, as their seniors worked on welding the gate again.

Thors was a mess. Students were running around carrying books or bags. From what they could see from the open gates of the main building, the inside was much worse. A few students in noble outfits were standing guard outside the Auditorium, seniors by the look of it.

"Where the hell is Schwarzer? He should be here with us!" Patrick came outside to meet them, flanked by Ferris, wielding her orbal bow and her older brother. "And just what the hell was that explosion by the old schoolhouse? We just went in there and saw a huge mess!"

"Look, we don't have much time" Elliot put away his orbal staff and started pointing to the students running from the library. "We need to get them inside quickly! They are in grave danger!"

"We're may be a military academy, but for cadets we sure are lacking in awareness" Ferris made her way to the library and started barking at the mix of commoners and nobles. They quickly went back inside the library. Satisfied, she came back to the semi-circle that now formed in front of the main building.

Another huge explosion thundered through the air around them, Elliot felt that one closer than the others. He glanced and saw a column of smoke come from the train station. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea."

_Chapter 5_

_Manning the Iron Gates_

Edel came out from the auditorium with Theresia and Emily at her sides. "I have to say... I'm not sure we can do anything against those things that gutted tanks." Emily grabbed her orbal pistol and aimed down the sights. "But we can teach them how the Lacrosse Club fights." Theresia nodded as Ferris walked up to her.

"So, Regnitz. How's the situation?"

"It's not good." He touched his glances out of habit. "Rean's gone, the rest are holding-"

"What!?" A collective response. Loud one. Vivi and her twin sister came out of the main building carrying a student to the auditorium. She was out cold.

"Yeah. He summoned a huge armored knight out of nowher-"

"We need to move!" A white uniform, golden haired senior ran to the outside from the main building, carrying her fencing sword. Loggins, closely following the fencing club captain. Elliot looked around. An impressive lineup of senior students was ready to fight, with a few freshmen showing up as well.

Vivi returned from the Auditorium, now a makeshift shelter for civilians. "Colette's out cold, she hit her head pretty hard when she fainted." Her legs were splattered with blood and reassured everyone when they looked at her. "She cut herself a bit. Linde's taking care of her"

"Vivi, is there a train crew at the auditorium?"

"A what?"

"A train crew. We came to find that to get the hell out of here."

"I don't know, let me..." she turned around and got back in. Fie and Elliot decided to just go into the auditorium themselves. Machias meanwhile argued with Patrick on how to deal with this situation.

"Does anyone here know how to operate a train?!" Elliot shouted but it was not heard. People crying, people shouting over each other, that was the scene. He spotted Linde administering first aid to a lady who'd cut herself with shattered glass. A window probably shattered from the explosions going on.

"Fie, let's find that crew"

"On it" She bolted to the right.

He went left. He made a big sweep of the area, but no one knew much about the people they were looking for. He eventually found the receptionist to the train station, the one that they grew acquainted with over their field trips. "Excuse me?" She didn't answer. She was leaning against the wall, hugging her legs. "Excuse me!" He tried moving her gently.

Fie walked up to him and looked at her. "She's in shock." Elliot had assumed that... but it wasn't good enough for them.

"Fie, go look for the train crew." She quickly got back to it. Another explosion rocked the town. Were they getting closer? This noise, it's so violent. Screams, windows breaking, gunfire. More screams. Mumbling... He concentrated on the mumbling. Only on that. Isolating sounds was what he was good at. He first isolated the mumbling out. Then the screams.

Suddenly it was all starting to make more sense to him. It was now quieter than before. His eyes closed, picturing a green garden, a small gazebo where a princess sat... birds flying freely. A fountain, where water could flow.

Only a big explosion that shattered a huge window next to him brought him back. Only then did he realize that he was playing the violin. Everyone was looking at him wide eyed. Even the receptionist, who managed to stand up, albeit with shaky legs. Fie was looking at him from the second floor of the building. When Elliot found her, she shrugged. No sign of any train crew here, confirmed by the now healthier receptionist.

"Elliot!" Linde caught up to him before they left to report this to Machias. He was not expecting to hear his name. "Whatever you did... you just calmed everyone down a bit... How...?"

He scratched his nose. "Everyone loves music... we just found something in common to share." Linde looked at him even more puzzled now, before looking down for a few moments. She looked back up to Elliot, decided.

"Is... Gaius ok?"

"He's with the others at the train station." He tried to flash her a reassuring smile. She smiled before turning back, possibly a fake smile as well. Elliot wasn't sure if he saw a tear streak down her face. Going back outside however dispelled that nice moment as they were greeted with Machias and Patrick who were not understanding each other. Loudly.

Vincent and Ferris were looking at them as if they were a comedy duo. Paula and Lambert came from the track field. "We just finished locking up the horses. I don't think there's much to worry about there." Lambert looked to Vincent. "What are we going to do about all this?"

He shrugged as he pointed at the hardheaded freshmen butt it out in the middle of the campus. Emily and Friedel, on the other hand, didn't care to discuss their options and just went to the front gate, and helped Towa and George with the welding. George wiped away sweat from his face. "I don't need to tell you that this wouldn't withstand a single armored car, but it's better than nothing."

"Do we have wood or something we can barricade this with?" Everyone looked around, but ultimately no one answered. "Ok. Lambert, George, Vincent, find us some wood from the workshop." The three men nodded as they took off, almost instantly. "Paula, take Vivi and go hide with the horses so that they don't get antsy." They looked at each other and nodded. "Who's left?"

Ferris, Patrick, Machias, Emily, Theresia, Edel, Freidel all looked at each other.

Fie and Elliot were looking at them a bit from the side, but it was assumed they were in the group as well. "I guess we'll have to make do" Patrick took his fencing sword out. "Schwarzer did tell me to make sure that this place is safe."

"Class VII is stuck in the train station." Towa started pacing. "Even if we all move out to help them there's no guarantee that we'll get them to safety." Machias opened his mouth but Towa rose a finger "No, let me finish." She kept on pacing as well. "We tried stopping them, but they vehemently insisted on going out to help the instructors."

"However, I do not believe for one second that we have to abandon our friends, our classmates, our clubmates. Our rivals. At the very least, that's not what I was taught to do. Those are not Dreichels' words. We're supposed to stand up, not lay down."

George and the others came back with a few boxes of stuff. No wood in sight. They did catch the tail end of the speech, however.

"I do not know what we can do, or what even I can do, but I know that I'm not going to let any of you get hurt over indecision. If we do go out, we have to mean it. Otherwise we'd just be getting in the way."

"Prez, I don't want to interrupt your speech but look at this" Vincent carried a few weird looking orbal pistols.

"Aren't these flare guns?" Ferris looked at them as Vincent passed them out. A few moments of silence were shattered once again by an explosion. Really close this time.

"I have to ask you once again. Are you sure?" No one said anything, just looking into her eyes was enough. "Okay."

A few minutes passed, as the Thors students piled up against the wall next to the gate. Towa shot one of the flare guns into the sky. With a loud roar, the upperclassmen led the way over the wall as they climbed the makeshift ladder they fashioned out of crates. Once over it, everyone split up in halves and ran down each side of the road, into Trista.

They got as far as the bridge before a couple of soldiers noticed them. Towa, leading the left line took aim at their feet and shot a couple of times, startling them. The Lacrosse club girls shot the guns out of their hands. Quickly outmatched, they surrendered.

So far so good, Elliot thought. As the upperclassmen crossed the bridge they noticed that the train station was effectively under siege, with at least 30 soldiers stacked by the gate, a couple of those armored soldats and a bunch of armored cars, even tanks, by the entrances to Trista.

The station's door was no more, but the soldiers were reluctant to go in, as purple static lit up dust that came from inside.

"Looks like Sara is fine at least." Fie was the last one to cross the bridge, as the cadets spread out left and right and out of sight. Fie, Machias and Elliot were on the left squad, together with Towa, Ferris and Patrick. They were the diversion.

They started crouching amongst the potted plants of the flower shop. Fie signaled to Machias to give him a boost into the roof.

"Wait... Where are the teachers?"

Towa looked at Elliot bewildered, only now realizing that they'd forgotten that the teachers were out here too. Using hand gestures, Towa told Friedel, second team commander, to move along the right side and see if they could spot the teachers. Fearing the worst, second squad moved fast.

They would be seen easily, they had to act. Towa propped up to her feet and with a hand gesture she gave the signal. "Open Fire!" Everyone who had a weapon started firing as fast as they could. Elliot could only cast an art once before the soldiers returned fire.

"Fall back!"

Machias, to the further left, ran through toppling a few pots. Ferris caught one of the pots with her feet, trying to stop it from falling but it just shattered. Cursing, she also fell back, narrowly avoiding a shot that shattered the window.

Fie managed to take a few shots from the rooftop before she got fired at. She slid down the rooftop, rolling after she hit the street. Their squad was now fully behind the flower shop, as shots kept coming. Friedel's squad came back from their sortie with negative head gesture. They'd not found the instructors.

Elliot peeked down the left side of the house, fearing soldiers would move against them, but nothing came. In fact, what came was an armored car's turret. It landed near the bridge, in the middle of both squads.

It exploded a few seconds later, but not before hearing a roar come from the general direction of the train station. Elliot saw Friedel, who had a much better line of sight, as her serious face turned into a half smirk. The rest of the armored car crashed next to the turret and panicked yells came from the plaza.

"Panicked or not, they still outnumber us! Go back to the other side of the bridge!" Towa ordered her squad back as Theresia and Emily punched a couple of soldiers who ran this way. The ones that they'd subdued were nowhere to be seen now. As the instructors rushed out of the train station, guns blazing, a couple of armored cars pushed through the carcass of the first one and pushed full speed through the bridge; almost catching Vincent under the wheels before he jumped out of the way.

"Thank Aidios Sariffa is not here. She would murder that guy." Ferris nodded at his brother. The second armored car followed the first one that was almost up the hill. Without a word, Towa also nodded at the other squad, who took it as a signal to go back to Thors. George was left alone manning the gate, and he would be hard pressed to do anything.

The first armored car exploded and toppled to the right. "Whoops. Guess that's where that mine went." Elliot looked at Fie, who just shrugged back. The explosion bought a couple of seconds for the assault team to go up and take the second armored car. The commander tried jumping out after they opened the top hatch, but he was quickly hit with the butt of Emily's orbal pistol.

Another barrage of shots was heard from the train station.

"We have to go back, there's nothing we can do here!" Towa tugged on Machias' sleeve trying to get him to move. The crew of the first armored car was leaving from the emergency hatches as it started to catch fire slowly, the assault team dispersed quickly to try and grab all the soldiers, while Emily was still dragging people out of the second one. Towa and the other squad moved in and secured the ones she took prisoner, while pointing them to Thors.

George ran out of the school to start securing the prisoners, together with a few reinforcements. Paula and Vivi, riding on the same horse, showed up and pointed guns at around to make them move faster, Alan and Bridget were also standing by the gate.

Elliot himself tried catching his breath as he walked past his classmates and into campus, watching the number of captured soldiers sitting in front of the main building increased.

A guy with a beanie and a camera was taking pictures of their faces. "How come no one is a girl? Is the provincial army that bad a place to work in?" One of the soldiers glared at Rex as he shrugged and walked back to the side of the front gate, where a radio had been set up. Munk was trying to get the radio to get any kind of feedback, but nothing was coming through.

The armored car that the assault team captured rolled into campus as well, as Machias and Fie were sitting on top of it. "That worked out, somehow." Machias jumped down the side of the car, as Emily popped up from the driver's seat, only to be assaulted by a star-struck Vivi.

An odd silence settled as everyone looked to Towa again. Sure. They'd done all this but for what?

"How long has it been already? Since the Heimdallr attack, I mean." Elliot prodded Munk who checked a few notes he'd taken down.

"Uh, around 50 minutes?" He confirmed this with George, who nodded after taking a look at his watch.

"Even if we assume that the divisions at the Twin Dragons bridge are moving to Heimdallr it would take them…" Machias stopped to count numbers on his hands. "Around 5 or 6 hours? Maybe?"

"Oh, please." Patrick, still eager to go at it, jumped in. "Allow me to interrupt this fantastic train of thought before it proceeds further. The divisions at Twin Dragons bridge should have to go through the troops that are well prepared for a fight. These ones assaulting Trista are just a sideshow." He pointed at the soldiers they captured.

Alan and Bridget finished securing the last of the prisoners as Elliot looked at them from a distance. "They are not much older than us you know..." he was about to go and help with that before Munk spoke.

"I've managed to tweak the radio to tune into other broadbands used by military officers." He glanced up, holding the headset that just covered one ear. "It's not looking good. Heimdallr is a mess."

"Do we even have a chance?"

"Elliot, now's not the time for that kind of talk" Machias put a hand on his shoulder.

"He's right though." The 3 men looked at Fie. "We don't have a chance to win this, no matter how you put it. Understanding your limits is an important aspect of combat."

Elliot scratched his nose. "Well if anyone knows about combat it's you." She shrugged back. Towa and Vivi showed up to the table. Munk got back to his radio device as Towa briefed them on who they'd taken prisoner, and what they knew.

They looked at the armored car, now stationed next to the gate. "It's ironic how a military academy does not have anything to fight with other than personal weapons." Machias was right. It was a ludicrous thought.

Vivi crossed her arms as she shook her head. "Do we even know what we're fighting? It could be the entire empire against us for all we know."

They all remained quiet. It was at the back of their heads this whole time, probably why they went to Munk for news. They were not on Titus gate, where action might have happened in the Liberl incident. Or in Garrelia Fortress. They were in the middle of the empire, where the closest imperial force was just getting destroyed in the capital.

"I don't think that the noble faction expected this much opposition, even if they did send their new soldats. Heimdallr was invaded with a huge number of them." Everyone nodded at Elliot's remark. "Trista is more of a secondary objective, something that might be nice to capture, but we were never expected to even resist."

"Which is what I just said." Patrick and Vincent walked into the meeting. "Sure, we might have caught them by surprise at the first, but thinking that victory is possible is outrageous."

"Exactly." Patrick looked confused, as he was agreeing with him. "But what is a victory in this scenario for the enemy?"

Patrick rose an eyebrow. "I'm not sure I follow." In fact, no one did. Elliot eyed the armored car.

"They don't know how many of us are here, nor how many are actually ready to fight. And with the instructors out there raising hell, they probably don't understand anything either." Everyone looked at him, perplexed.

"I see." Fie crouched down on the floor and started drawing big square.

Barring Fie's reaction, the rest were still perplexed. He continued. "Even if they don't know how many we are, we don't have soldats or tanks, we are at a disadvantage." Elliot pointed to the now captured vehicle. "But we do have that."

Vincent scratched the back of his head. "We won't all fit in there, and I'm still not quite sure about what your point is."

Elliot took a deep breath. "The provincial army wants to capture Thors and restrain their students, probably use us as bargain chips in the long haul." Vincent nodded, still not grasping it. "They probably think that they have a better chance at getting us to surrender by capturing the instructors, which is why they told us not to go help them."

"Done." Fie got back to her feet, a map of Trista drawn on the floor with a few twigs and her guns. "Think of this as the bridge and this as the train station" she pointed around the makeshift map, as everyone crouched down. "Last we checked we saw at least a couple of soldats left and probably three armored cars, the instructors should be more than enough to handle them based on what we saw earlier."

"... What did you see?" Vivi tried imagining the situation.

"Our best bet is to simply go out once again, but this time do it in force. We might just be able to do it with all of you here." Elliot looked at all the upperclassmen as he said this. "And if we get the instructors to help us with holding the gates…"

Towa looked around at the students still scurrying around the campus in a generalized panic. "Even if you say that, we can't really do much." The student circle around the plan that Fie drew had been bolstered by Paula, Alan and Bridget; but even then, it was not even close to the full strength that Thors could muster.

"But we do have that car, it should even the odds somewhat"

"You keep going on and on about that car, what can it do?" Patrick scoffed at him.

Elliot walked up to the vehicle and put a hand on it. "We can pretend that we're the enemy here, Patrick"

His eyes widened. "Surely, you jest."

Towa, however, was the one that jumped horrified at the idea. "No, no. This is too much even for Class VII, Elliot. As the student council presiden-"

"Elliot is right." Machias pushed his glasses up. "If we pretend that we're the enemy they won't know what hit them. It could let us punch a decisive blow."

"I'm all for defending the academy but I'm not suicidal" Vincent backed off, hands at his sides as he shook his head.

"No one here wants to die, but there is a bigger chance of people dying the more we wait." Elliot got up on the armored car. "Isn't that what being a soldier means? Protecting the innocent?"

Fie jumped to the top of the car and entered the gunner's turret. "Arise o youth yadda, yadda." she closed the hatch in Machias' face before he could argue for the gunner position.

"President! Stop this madness!" Patrick pointed shaking his finger at the armored car, the turret moved a bit as Fie started testing out the controllers.

Vivi also jumped up into the armored car. "I'll drive, I think I did good when we tried these earlier this year." Machias extended a hand to her as she got up and into the hatch, followed by Machias and later Elliot.

"President!" The lacrosse club now showed up to the commotion by the gate. "What's going on?" Emily walked up, as she eyed the armored car, that was now rumbling as the engine started.

"... it might work" Towa finally spoke, after a few seconds of silence. "They probably won't know who to shoot, and even if they find out, they probably will buy enough time for the instructors."

Patrick was flabbergasted at the president. "Are you going to let them do this? Are you cracking under pressure, Herschel?"

"I am still your student council president, and your upperclassmen. This is their choice, and I have the duty to save as many as possible. What's the alternative?"

"Surrendering! There's no winning outcome here for us!" Elliot couldn't see their faces, but he imagined everyone agreed with him. Machias got up to close the hatch, when the pink haired girl turned the wheel violently.

"Ahhhh! More than enough talk" Vivi floored the pedal, almost knocking Machias to the outside of the hatch before he managed to close it.

"WARN ME NEXT TIME!"

"Yeah, I hope we don't have a next time." Elliot muttered back at him, he was watching the road over Vivi's shoulder. Fie was still getting used to the turret controls. The Trista slope was coming up.

"You're going too fast!" And sure enough, the car jumped when they flew into the slope. They landed, but it shook the vehicle around, as Vivi steered frantically.

"Wow this moves faster than I thought" She tried swerving as she slowed down, trying to not kill them in the process.

Fie poked her head down from the gunner seat. "Alright. I think I figured this out, I need someone to be ready to reload, for when I shoot." Elliot turned halfway and got ready to service the weapon should the need to fire more than once.

Machias was trying to find his glasses on the floor, which had flown off during the earlier jump. "We're not going to join the actual battle, just stand in the rear and hope that the instructors have not given up, otherwise it's a waste of time."

"Roger!" Vivi was maybe a bit too excited for this. She floored the gas again, making the engine the loudest they'd heard it until now. The closed hatches made the entire vehicle an echo chamber, and it was too late when they realized that they had to use the headsets to communicate efficiently.

"What?!" The pink haired twin turned her head sideways trying to hear Fie. She pushed Elliot out of the way but couldn't get to Vivi in time.

For a second Elliot wasn't sure of what was happening, he just felt lighter. Fie pushed Vivi down and herself on top of the pink haired girl, Machias was already hunched over looking for his glasses, it seemed for a second that they were floating.

Suddenly, everyone got pushed to the side of the car.

He couldn't hear anything either. That was weird.

He woke up with Machias slapping him in the face, eyes wide open. He could not hear him however. He was shouting something. Smoke was visible behind him.

"The smoke." He warned him. Machias shut him up or at least he thought that because he kept shouting at him. He saw Vivi and Fie trying to kick the hatches off the car.

Both girls came up to him and grabbed his shoulders after they got one open.

"I can walk! I just need to get up." Fie was shouting something to Machias as they dragged him closer to the hatch they'd just opened. "What happened? Something happened?" Vivi looked into his eyes and slapped him around a bit before shouting something to Machias, probably.

They threw him outside the hatch.

Smoke was most of what he could see, but he also noticed half of the tires were missing, and the car was toppled over to the side.

"Did we get hit?"

Fie crawled out of the hatch and took position to the right of the car, as Machias crawled out after Vivi. They did not even cross the bridge, in fact the car was very close to falling off to the river.

"Am I talking?" The three looked back at him, shocked.

"Elliot? Are you ok?!" Machias dropped his shotgun and ran over to his side.

"I've been talking for these past few minutes."

"How many fingers am I holding up?" He held up a couple of fingers, but his eyes weren't focusing really well.

"We have to move!" Fie kicked Machias out of the way "Can you walk?"

"I've been telling you, I can!" He moved his legs. Or at least he thought he did.

"Machias can you carry him? We have to walk down these stairs. **Now**"

"Yeah, of course." Elliot put his arm over Machias and he helped him get around the now burning vehicle. They made their way down the stairs and into the small pier. His entire clothes were bloody, in fact his vision was as well.

Vivi used her blazer to dry up the blood in Elliot's face as everyone caught their breath.

"Can you talk, Elliot?"

"What happened?" He said as he tried to get up on his own but failed.

Vivi washed her blazer on the river before answering. "We hit one of Fie's mines, it made us literally fly down and we crashed. You hit your head really bad."

Fie came back and looked at his legs. "You hit your head really bad, but your legs are in one piece. You're just in shock" He patted him on the head before sitting down, leaning against the wall. "What now?" as she cleaned her bloody hand on the floor.

Luckily for them, their own explosion was not heard, apparently. They were completely out in the open and would be seen if someone crossed the bridge. Which is when they heard marching. Everyone's eyes widened. Machias and Fie grabbed their weapons and pointed them at the bridge, Vivi crouched down beside him, protecting him from any potential harm.

"Eyes front!" The instructors were marching, hands behind their heads and guns pointed at them. Van Dyke was, however, not walking like that. He was marching with his head up high at the front of the pack.

Machias looked at Fie who just shrugged. The rumbling got worse as a tank, or what they assumed was a tank, rolled past the bridge as well. No one bothered looking down at them, and the smoldering wreck probably attracted more attention.

"I think that's all of them." Fie came running back from the stairs and informed them of the situation. "This may be our only chance to get out of here."

Machias agreed and grabbed Elliot once again. His legs had recovered a bit, but not enough to reliably walk up the stairs. "Maybe we should grab the radio and take it with us?" Fie and Vivi liked the idea. Fie led the way with her guns pointing forward as they walked around the wreck. The fire had been put out by someone already.

Fie froze for an instant, before jumping forward. As Elliot was dragged around by Machias, it took them a few seconds to realize what had happened. Fie was holding a soldier with one of her guns at his neck. He looked terrified at the size of the blade.

"No, I can't find anyone here, maybe they took prisoners?" came a voice from inside the vehicle. Machias pointed to the car, telling him to answer normally.

"Y-yeah! They probably did!" He had his hands up in the air.

"Are you OK?" A loud knock was heard inside the car. "Ouch!"

A can hit the shoe of the soldier that Fie held at gunpoint, before she kicked him to the floor. The can rumbled and suddenly it started leaking smoke at a fast pace. "RUN!"

"You don't have to t-" A rifle shot was heard.

"Go! Keep running!"


	7. Chapter 6

"No, I told you. Round up the Guardian Force and link up with division HQ in Crossbell before doing anything else."

"Yes, Captain."

She sighed as she unbuttoned her gun holster and left it on the seat next to her. The civil war had taken its toll on her, not to mention the invasion of Crossbell and the skirmishes with Calvard. At any moment, they could have escalated into something way more problematic; but she somehow managed to keep the easterners guessing long enough for them to not fully commit to anything.

She sat down and looked through the window, admiring the reconstruction of what was previously Garrelia into a simple train station and military depot, as they slowly moved further and further away. The train gathered speed and soon enough the landscape was that which she knew well. Erebonia.

Of course, Claire wasn't all alone when doing this. Her trusty cadre of RMP officers that helped her since before the war were all helping keep the order and the lifeline of the empire running like clockwork.

"To think that people lived without trains for the longest time..."

It was getting dark, but she was not sleepy at all. In fact, her trip back to Heimdallr would probably be faster if she simply took a nap, but there was work to be done. Not on the train, although that would be a nice thought. The GF had been subdued in a matter of days, the problem was that most of them resorted to going undercover, and work from the shadows.

She was fine with that, her element was never frontline combat anyways. Claire got up and went to the bar car. She liked travelling on the normal trains, see how everything they did affected the normal people. Millium had Airgetlam and Lechter was often riding alongside the Chancellor himself so they never worried about the trains as much as they should.

And Rufus, well, he had the entire Albarea wealth, and airships, at his disposal. Even if it was now under his brother's command.

_Chapter 6_

_What the Rebellion Taught Us_

Her attire caught the eye of a few civilians who scurried away from her path, evidently not wanting any sort of trouble. She tried reassuring them with a smile but that only scared them more. Disappointed, she sat down by the counter. Most of the times, she recognized the people in the trains, more so in the transcontinental railroad, but this particular face was not known to her.

"A martini please."

"Certainly, Ma'am"

She thought that maybe he realized who she was, but his demeanor had not changed since she first went in the room. Methodically studying everyone's reactions to every movement was her... hobby? Would it count as a hobby if that's her job?

A minute later a cold, refined glass sat in front of her, an olive skewer adorning it. Martinis were her drink of choice for various reasons, not just the fact that it was served cold. It could be served sweet or dry, but it would always be the same transparent tones that reflected off the triangular glass as it dripped small drops down the side. If one wanted a cold drink, any other drink would suffice, but none-

"I'm sorry, I never asked if you wanted it dry or sweet." the bartender was apologizing, bowing. He moved to take the glass away, but she stopped him.

"It's OK, I like both either way." She picked up the skewer and took an olive with her mouth before putting the skewer down on the napkin to the side. "You're new here, I would recognize you if you weren't"

"Yes Ma'am. Started right after the war ended." He looked around, at the few customers that were in the train. "Pay's good and I'm used to serving drinks. More than I'd like to admit."

"Oh?" She took a sip, surprised that in fact it did taste better than the ones that she was used to. She herself tried making her own drinks back home but it was not a result she was actually proud of.

"Oh, you weren't just saying that, you liked it sweet as well."

She rose an eyebrow at him.

"No, it's just that, with your demeanor, I figured that you actually liked it dry. I'm just used to serving them sweet"

She took another olive. "And how did you figure that out?" This old man was intriguing to say the least.

Thinking he'd offended her in some way he once again bowed. She quickly reassured him.

"It's just that, normally, the people who drink sweet martinis ask for it."

"You seem to have a lot of experience in dealing with people, for being such a new hire."

Another customer sat on the far end of the counter, glanced sideways and saw her. He got up and left in a hurry. The barman, halfway to ask him what he wanted, turned back baffled.

"It's a normal occurrence." Soon enough her drink was gone, but the barman wasted no time in serving her another, not even giving Claire enough time to ask for one.

"Maybe he's from Crossbell?"

"No, he was imperial. The civil war left a lot of people scared of many things, even if the Crossbell thing did deflect issues a lot." She gladly took the new drink but caught him eyeing the RMP emblem. "I'm off duty, don't worry about it."

The barman sighed before going back to polishing the glasses.

"Ask away." Maybe slightly carefree over the alcohol, she didn't feel bad about confiding to this particular barman. Maybe it was the fact that she hadn't had dinner, meaning the alcohol just acted faster.

"Ho-" He seemed taken aback but let a small smile out. I'm not just some random girl, don't worry I won't take offense.

"How was the war?"

Of course, most of the war was not covered by media faithfully, Lechter saw to that, even from below the Azure Tree, so she could understand the question.

"It was… harsh"

Before she knew it, an hour had gone by and her stomach rumbled as she talked. Dinner sounds fantastic right about now.

"We'll be doing a 15-minute stop in Celdic, imperial regulations for all transcontinental trains." he informed her. Of course, she knew this herself as she was the one who made the final call on it. The measure was taken to shift train guards and to report suspicious activity while not looking suspicious inside the train. All lessons learned from chasing the ILF before the civil war.

She juggled the idea of stopping in Trista for a bite, but she enjoyed the company of the old bartender. "Tell you what, I've got a challenge for you." He was already giving her his full attention, but that piqued his interest. "Figure out what's my favorite food while I'm travelling on trains. In fact, let's make it a bet." He liked the idea, they settled on some sort of favor.

While he cooked, she enjoyed the small talk the man gave her. Apparently, he was a butler from a small noble line that was deposed when the railroad took over. Ironic, in a way, but sad. The railway is meant to unify people not destroy lives, that was always their intention, at least her intention. Speaking for Lechter's thoughts was a tall order even for her.

After about 5 minutes he presented her dinner. A plate with a sandwich, chicken, bacon, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. A club sandwich.

"I'm actually surprised."

"I'm actually surprised it was your favorite dish as well, I just made the thing I enjoy the most. And that I'm best at doing as well."

Claire sighed, completely defeated by the bartender in front of her.

"So, what was the favor that we were betting on?"

"Oh that. It's not actually a favor, more like a request."

"A request?"

"Yes, you see... I actually have to do a favor for a kid who I helped back in the war." The old man produced a letter out of his pocket. "I agreed to deliver this letter to Ymir, but I don't feel confident sending this the normal way."

"Ymir you say?"

"I think he was a student running away from Thors on the day the war broke out, that's all I know."

She was crossing faces mentally, everyone who left Thors the first day, the people that were not there...

"Actually, they were three kids, not just one. They reminded me of my past, so I helped them move along." He shrugged not thinking much of it. "But yes, since you work for the RMP, maybe you knew who to deliver it to and make sure it reaches. Apparently, the baron there would know who to deliver it to."

Technically, I run the RMP. Also, of course he'd know.

"May I see the letter?" He gave it to her. She eyed it curiously, not opening it of course. It had seen some wear, from being carried around by the old man who evidently was waiting for someone like me, but...

"Why not just deliver it yourself?"

"I would, but I don't really know much about Ymir. I was going to get to it eventually but kept putting it off."

"You work for the railway, I'm sure you could have asked this of any RMP officer…"

"But, none of them wear their heart on their sleeve as you do."

She laughed. "I'm starting to think that you're messing with me."

He was dead serious however, not even cracking a smile. "Everyone from the RMP who I've talked to is constantly worried about what their superior will say if they caught them doing favors for civilians, 'Cool Maiden' or something? I think that's what they said."

She made a mental note to improve communication to the to, drastically. The conversation dragged on for a while, dodging the matter of who she was, of course, to learn how she could improve from an outside point of view.

After keeping the conversation going, she agreed to take the letter to Ymir. Claire had to get to Roer, so it was just a small detour.

"Now arriving at... Heimdallr... Heimdallr..." The speaker told them. She bid farewell to the old man and walked out. She saw that Heimdallr station was in a state of upheaval. Well, it was to be expected, she thought.

Cameramen had gathered beyond the perimeter delimited by RMP guards, by the gates of the station, so the platform itself was not perturbed as the few travelers got off the train, worried by the eerie lack of people on the normally packed place.

"Is he really coming, then, Captain?"

"Are all preparations ready?"

"Yes, Ma'am"

"Then he will be coming."

A single engine and a couple of wagons, one of those which was armored and had no windows, sat lonely on the far end of the station.

"The Ashen Chevalier himself... I can't wait to hear how he beats the Calvardians back to Altair"

She turned around briskly before telling her subordinates that they were not to engage in conversation with him. He should be well rested for what lay ahead, and mere distractions would only bother him.

"Ma'am! Train incoming!"

"He's only a student, how can he-"

"Quiet!"

The train's brakes squealed to a full stop on the far end of the station. Claire simply caught a glimpse of the boy with the walking Divine Knight at his back, he patted it on the ankle as it crouched into the armored wagon.

Claire waited until the Crossbell bound train departed before going back into the RMP headquarters, where she had to field questions about the Heimdallr station being used freely by the RMP to deploy troops and the newly invested Ashen Chevalier by the governor of the capital, Regnitz.

"Surely, governor, as a friend of the chancellor, you could field these questions to him."

"I'm asking **you**, Captain. Do you agree with this?"

"I have full confidence in the Chancellor."

He sighed as he adjusted his glasses. "You're conflicted, you just can't see it."

"This meeting is over, governor."

He left without uttering another word, finally freeing her up. The station was now busy again, as the last trains of the day started to roll in. She would have to move quickly to get the one to Roer. Of course, she wasn't doing this out of kindness, Marquis Rogner had left a huge mess for her to deal with.

Nothing comparable to what the others were doing. Rufus had to bring order to Crossbell and Lechter was going around western Erebonia, dealing with Cayenne's misdeeds. Rogner was child's play compared to that.

Her trip to Roer was uneventful at best, and she managed to doze off as soon as she sat down.

When she woke up the train was arriving at the station. She took the letter from her pouch, thinking about how she could give the letter to Rean. She figured giving it to him as he left for Crossbell wouldn't help him at all. She didn't come to Roer to give the letter to the baron, but it wasn't a bad idea either.

Without a thought, she found herself in her favorite bar, F. She sighed heavily as she loosened her hair, now really off duty. "I did call him out that day." she stretched her arms as she was offered a Martini. A regular as her didn't need to order anything at this point. Almina, the woman behind the counter came up to her giggling. "Oh? This isn't like you, at all."

"Captain listen to this."

Since she frequented many bars around the empire on her downtime, she got to know a lot of people, and even came across multiple bracers, the few that remained in the country. Toval bought her a martini once, after the whole ordeal in Heimdallr.

"I'm finally seeing someone!"

"Oh! Good for you Almina."

She blushed like a schoolgirl. As she went on and on about how this train operator was a fantastic man, and how he had befriended a few people from Nord on his job until he got transferred to another line. The man was apparently promoted after the war as well.

"The war changed a lot of things here, huh."

"Yeah."

They both looked down into the martini glass for a few minutes of silence as the waltz that was playing came and went. Claire took to paying her drinks on her own money rather than the RMP tab after the war, figuring that her subordinates needed the money more than she did.

However, this time, Almina stopped her. "This one is on me, as long as you help me out a bit."

"Sure, anything."

Almina smiled back at her. Maybe she spoke too soon. She produced a letter.

"He gave me this letter he found on the train, back when the war started, belonged to a blonde girl, student of Thors, that's as much as he knows."

She massaged her temple. "Let me guess. You want me to find the one it was meant for."

"I would expect nothing less from the _Icy Maiden_" she gleefully went back to her duties at the counter. Claire frowned at her, she knew that she didn't like being called that, but whatever; she let it slide.

"I wish I had that sort of clarity to predict things... no I just have turned into mailwoman all of a sudden." she muttered as she got up.

As she walked up the stairs she just looked at the letter. This one had seen considerably more wear than the previous one. She confirmed her hypothesis after she saw a 'To Rean' on the outside.

An idea came to her. Maybe she can use this as an excuse to talk to Rean finally. She felt he now despised her, part of the reason why she stood back in Heimdallr. Of course, she couldn't say that to her subordinates, but...

OK Claire, this might be your only chance.

_1 month later_

_Trista Station_

The perimeter was marked by two RMP men, as the train rolled in, a very quiet train. They'd commissioned a new train for this particular trip, so its brakes were not that harsh to the ears.

The Ashen Knight was tied up at the back, on an unprotected wagon as Rean walked past the few engineers who would be taking care of Valimar.

She was waiting for him at the end of the platform, hoping for a chance to talk.

Why is he going the long way around!?

She quickly made up the distance. This was not how it was supposed to go. Quick. Say something.

"Welcome back, Rean. You must be exhausted."

He stopped on his tracks but didn't turn around.

"Not really. I barely did anything. Everything went off without a hitch, mostly thanks to Valimar's power." He turned halfway. "Not to mention the planning of your people."

Claire was also halfway to getting closer to him to talk at a normal distance, and not with a tank's distance between them. She sighed. "You're annoyed, I take it? By the way we do things."

He turned back. "Not really. Regardless of the means, the war coming to a swift end was a good thing for everyone. As for what happened to Crossbell... I'm not in any position to talk. No, those aren't what bother me."

He finally turned around. "I can buy that you had no idea Rufus was an Ironblood... but did you REALLY not know about my real father?"

She evaded his glare. This was not at all how she pictured this. Why was this happening?

"I didn't have any hard evidence, but I did suspect that might be the case. You just seemed somehow similar. The air about you, your facial features..."

She tried smiling at him, trying to break through his hurtful glare "I was always puzzled by how fascinated he was by your class as well."

"I see. Excuse me, then."

"Re..." She tried to stop him as he simply walked away from the conversation.

"That wasn't the only reason I worried about you, you know... Not that I could possibly tell him that."

She just watched him as he left the station. She left on the same train that he came in from Crossbell, with both letters still in her bag.

Next time, Claire, next time you'll give him the letters.

_Epilogue_

_On the Cold Trail_

_On a train bound for Heimdallr_

Her routine of examining dossiers was the only thing she found true comfort in, that and maybe actually getting her job done properly. It was never really clear to her, however, where the job ended, and her personal stakes drove her to be as meticulous as she was. Her Thors days were not that much different from others', in fact, she was as normal as most graduates. Class VII itself was as normal as they came.

Their paths diverged after only one year, but she was sure that their bonds from everything that happened were as strong as steel. Crossbell had been completely secured now, Rufus and Lechter had already nullified everything that the SSS tried to do, despite the initial setback after the destruction of the orbal network's database. That had, in fact, served its purpose, reminding them to redouble the efforts to keep the SSS in check.

In fact, they seemed to have gone off the radar as well, mostly the same thing that Class VII did. Lloyd Bannings and KeA Bannings aside, Elie McDowell, Tio Plato, Randolph Orlando, Noel Seeker were all being watched. For some reason beyond her, the sixth member was untraceable, but it was of no consequence. The amount of interactions they'd had over the last 6 months were minimal.

With the Bracer Guild branch now closed as well, even the Divine Blade of Wind had nothing much to do to oppose Erebonian rule, but it was all a front. She knew it, and of course, the chancellor knew as well. It was simply the calm before the storm, until they decided to move again, and they would have to be prepared for it.

That was her job.

Her drink spilt all over the dossier of Tio Plato as a pink haired girl hit the glass with her purse.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" Flustered, she threw herself over the napkins and tried drying everything up before noticing that it was already pretty much unintelligible. The girl in the green Thors uniform bowed down apologizing before even looking at her.

"Don't worry about it, I already memorized everything."

Perhaps recognizing the voice, she meekly looked up, noticing the blue hair almost instantly.

"C-Captain Claire?"

"Linde? Or is it Vivi."

She laughed.

"Oh, which one, I wonder?"

"Vivi it is then."

She faked frowning back and sat down across her. She would have sat down by the counter but all of the seats were already taken and reading dossiers like she was isn't something a barman should be privy to. Not that it mattered anyways because no one dared approach her, not when she was uniformed up at least.

"Today is a free day, right? Taking a trip to Heimdallr?"

"This late at night? No, I'm going for a job interview that I have tomorrow"

"Then why not take the morning train?"

"Because I can only miss one more class or I'd be forced to repeat second year! This way I can miss one in the morning and barely make it."

Haha! Of course the mischievous one would be this hard pressed to find room.

"A job interview, huh... Then not staying in the army?"

The girl laughed. "I think I've seen enough of war already."

"I'm quite sure that you have a future in the army as a reconnaissance officer, I'd vouch for you."

She smiled back. "I appreciate the offer, but I've seen the effect it had on a lot of people. Rean more than anyone."

A bad silence settled. She wanted to ask but...

"He's changed. With all the upperclassmen graduated and the rest of Class VII gone as well, it's like most people he got along with suddenly left and he's just there, stranded, wasting away."

Staring out of the window, she asked around the subject, trying to not seem interested. "That reminds me, I never got around to delivering something I had to give him."

"That's... not something I would ever expect you to say." Vivi was astonished. "I thought you could outpace an orbal computer with that big brain."

"Haha. No nothing like that, I'm just a simple girl"

Vivi rolled her eyes. "So, what's the thing?"

"Just a couple of letters from the civil war." She'd said too much, she thought she saw a grin show for a few moments.

"Why would you be doing that?"

Groaning in her mind, she started explaining the coincidences that led to this predicament.

"Oh! I want to write one too!" She grabbed a napkin and quickly wrote something in it, before shoving it to her folded up.

"Don't read it! Give it only to Rean!"

"B-But you can-"

"Don't read it!"

"Arriving at... Heimdallr... Heimdallr..."

And with that, the pink haired girl jumped up, waved at her, reminding her not to look at the napkin one more time, and ran off into the station.

Sighing heavily she got up as well, paid for her drink and left the station. Once outside she looked around but trying to spot the girl was a waste of time. She turned around and faced the wall, opening the napkin as discreetly as possible.

'_I love you Rean'_

She crushed the paper and threw it into the nearest bin, not noticing her own blush.

_Fin._

**Allow me to have a word with you, random internet person that got this far into the story. Let me preface anything I say with a huge thank you. Huge thank you, for actually reading this far into the story.**

**This began as a really bad idea that bloated into a massive project for me, I just hope you had as much fun reading as I had writing it. If I have to be honest, however, this wasn't a fun project, rather a really serious one. I spent a lot of work and hours doing this, and I even had to rewrite two chapters in the way because I didn't approve of how bad the writing was at start.**

**I have to once again thank everyone who got this far, but I have to really thank Kitsune547 and YotakaOfAloy, massive help from both of them. They sacrificed their free time to beta-read for me, and I have no words for how much they helped me, once again thank you.**

**Minor thanks go to everyone on the Falcom discord who bothered answering lore questions where I couldn't find playthroughs that helped, as well as the two other guys in #f.**

**And above all I want to thank Nihon Falcom for their games that managed to reignite my passion for writing.**

**I do have a couple of other projects slowly baking in the oven, so I hope everyone who stuck with me through this story will look forward to them!**

**Once again, thank you for reading, and staying with me through this long journey.**

**See you someday!**


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